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EDITED BY 

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Volume XLIII 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

Edited by W, T. HARRIS, A.M., LL. D., United States Commissioner 
of Education. 



The International Education Series was projected for the purpose of 
bringing together in orderly arranj:ement the best writing's, new and 
old, upon educational subjects, and presenting a complete course of 
reading and training for teachers generally. Four departments are pre- 
sented, covering the entire tield of practical, theoretical, and historical 
education. 

I. — History of Education. (a) Original systems as ex- 
pounded by their founders, (b) Critical histories which set forth the 
customs of the past and point out their advantages and defects, explain- 
ing the grounds of their adopdon, and also of their final disuse. 

II. — Educational Criticism, (a) The noteworthy arraign- 
ments which educational reformers have put forth against existing sys- 
tems : these compose the classics of pedagogy, (b) The critical histories 
above mentioned. 

III.— Systematic Treatises on the Theory of Edu- 
cation, (a) Works written from the historical standpoint ; these, 
for the most part, show a tendency to justify the traditional course of 
Study and to defend the prevailing methods of instruction, (b) Works 
written from critical standpoints, and to a greater or less degree revo- 
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rV. — The Art of Education, (a) "Works on instruction 
and discipline, and the practical details of the schoolroom, (b) Works 
on the organization and supervision of schools. 

Practical insight into the educational methods in vogue can not be 
attained without a knowledge of the process by wh'ch they have come to 
be established. For this reason special prominence is given to the his- 
tory of the systems that have prevailed. 

Since history is incompetent to furnish the ideal of the future, works 
of educational criticism have a prominent place. Criticism is the puri- 
fying process by which ideals are rendered clear and potent, so that 
progress becomes possible. 

History and criticism combined make possible a theory of the whole. 
For, with an ideal toward which the entire movement tends, and an ac- 
count of the phases that have appeared in time, the connected develop- 
ment of the whole can be shown, and all united into one system. 

La.-.tly, after the science comes the practice, the art of education. 
This is treated in special works devoted to the devices and technical de- 
tails useful in the schoolroom. 

It is believed that the teacher docs not need authority so much as in- 
sight in matters of education. When he understands the theory of edu- 
cation and the history of its growth, and has matured his own point 
of view by careful study of the critical literature of education, then he is 
competent to select or invent such practical devices as are best adapted 
to his own wants. 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

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'pnE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES was projected for the pur- 
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VOLUMKS NOW READY. 

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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES 



THE STUDY 
OF THE CHILD 



A BRIEF TREATISE ON THE 
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD 

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR 
TEACHERS, STUDENTS, AND PARENTS 



/ .f BY 

A. R. TAYLOR, Ph.D. 

PRESIDENT OF THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
EMPORIA, KANSAS 




NEW YOttK.'" 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1898 



2n„f,„.,.^-''''"'0PiES RECEIVED. 
1898. ' '^•^.^i^O^ 



8150 



Copyright, 1898, 
By a. R. TAYLOR. 



Electrotyped and Printed 

AT THE APPLETON PrESS, U. S. A. 



LdlllS 



EDITOE'S PREFACE. 



In my preface to this sound and wholesome 
book on child study I will present some thoughts 
on the symbolic and conventional stages of mind 
in childhood and on the process by which the child 
outgrows the symbolic stage of mind. I will then 
consider the doctrine that concepts are mental 
images and bring forward the theory that they 
are not mental images but definitions, and con- 
clude by discussing imitation as the chief activity 
of the child in play and point out the change by 
which it becomes originality. 

The earlier period of infancy, say up to the 
age of six, with average children has been called 
the symbolic stage, while the later stage, which 
begins somewhere about six and lasts through life, 
is called the " conventional " stage. 

We commonly use the word symbolic in a re- 
stricted sense — namely, to signify the use of some 
material object to present an invisible spiritual ob- 
ject. The wind blows and shows power. It can 
not be seen, and yet it moves things that can be 
seen. Tlie breath too is a sort of wind, invisible 
and yet powerful. The soul moves the body and 
yet is not seen; it is a sort of wind; it is the 

V 



vi THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

breath. Such was the infantile way of thinking. 
Anima, the breath, was used to symbolize the soul. 
Its root is a word signifying the blowing of the 
wind. 

The constant use of the symbol tends to con- 
vert it into a conventional sign of the spiritual 
meaning. Anima at first conveyed the idea of 
breath, before passing to that of soul. The mind 
gradually shortened its contemplation of the phys- 
ical meaning and prolonged its stay on the spir- 
itual meaning and laid greater stress on it. By 
and by it forgot altogether the physical or mate- 
rial meaning, and went from the word directly to 
the idea of vital energy moving the body and pos- 
sessing thought and feeling. So at last the word 
anima came to be the conventional sign for soul 
and lost its symbolic use. The material meaning 
was forgotten. 

With increasing strength of mind the child 
grasps relations more and more fully, and by this 
his conceptions become less and less mere pictures. 
This is the way that he outgrows the symbolic 
stage of thought. 

To illustrate this process of growth, consider 
the chain of causality involved in thinking the fa- 
miliar object bread. This illustration is used by 
Professor Noire to explain apperception. Going 
backward toward the origin of bread we have suc- 
cessive steps of baking, kneading the dough, mix- 
ing the meal or flour with yeast, lard, butter, and 
other ingredients, the grinding of the grain and 
sifting the meal, the harvesting of the grain with 
all its details of cutting, binding sheaves, thresh- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. yii 

ing, etc., the earlier processes of plowing, harrow- 
ing, sowing the grain, its growth dependent on 
rain and sunshine. Each one of these links in 
the chain has side relations to other chains of 
cansality; for example, the yeast put into the 
bread connects it with hops or some other ferment 
or effervescent, the lard connects bread with the se- 
ries of ideas involved in pork-raising, the salt with 
salt manufacture, the baking with the structure 
of the oven and the fuel. The retrograde series 
toward the origin is matched with a progressive 
series toward the future use of the bread. There is 
the preparation for the table, the set meals, the 
eating and digestion, the sustenance of life, the 
strength acquired, the work accomplished by 
means of it, etc. 

This chain of causation is symbolized in the 
story of the House that Jack Built and similar 
inventions. 

In play the child lets one thing stand for an- 
other, and " makes believe," for instance, that 
this mud is dough; it can be dried or baked too. 
But here the chain of causality departs from that 
of bread. The child can not eat the mud loaf. 
The mud was not made of meal, flour, yeast, lard, 
and salt like dough. 

The child begins play by making believe that 
something is something else, when there is very 
little resemblance. It is nearly all make-believe 
at first. But he makes progress by demanding 
an increase of resemblance. He takes any stick 
for a horse at first; then he prefers a stick with 
a horse's head. Then no stick will do, but he 



viii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

must have a hobbyhorse on rockers, with saddle and 
bridle, and he imitates a gallop by rocking to and 
fro. His enjoyment of his play was greatest when 
he had the most make-believe in it. In proportion 
as he introduces real steps of causality he loses 
the educative effect of play and he gets less amuse- 
ment from it. For his enjoyment and educational 
advantage is proportioned to the amount his im- 
agination is exercised. When he receives a fin- 
ished hobbyhorse, with real saddle and bridle and 
other completed reproductions of the real horse, 
there is less for his imagination. He soon wearies 
of the finished, elaborate plaything. 

The child at first understands a very small 
fragment of the entire process of production of a 
thing. He pretends that a crooked stick is a 
scythe. But he is helped by this plaything to 
understand what is necessary for the real object, 
the scythe. It must have a blade, and he has a 
wooden one fastened to his crooked stick. Then 
he becomes impressed with the necessity of having 
a blade that will cut. If he gets this he gets a 
real scythe, and his play has converted itself into 
work. 

It is the dialectic process of play that it end 
by becoming work. Carry out the practice of 
anything and its natural results are its dialectic. 
The child starts with a stick for a horse and ends 
only with getting a real horse to ride and drive. 
There were many steps on the way: First a 
horse's head to his stick, then a bridle and a whip, 
then a chair represents a horse and wagon, then 
a playmate is harnessed as a horse, then a hobby- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



IX 



horse with all the limbs of a horse and with a 
close imitation of external appearance, then per- 
haps a dog or a goat harnessed to a toy wagon, 
then the real horse. 

All the steps in the ascent involve new con- 
cepts of what is necessary to the real causality. 
In a causation series the child can now think by 
definitions and not merely by pictures. This mat- 
ter of thinking-by-definitions ought to be carefully 
studied by the teacher in the primary school. 

The belief that concepts or general notions 
are mental images is very prevalent among psy- 
chologists. But it would be more correct to say 
that general notions are not mental images so 
much as definitions. A definition must state 
an identity with something else, and a difiier- 
ence. In a mere mental picture identity and dif- 
ference are not distinctly brought to attention. 
In the symbolic stage of the mind the distinction 
between the particular individual and the general 
class is not fully developed. When the child 
plays or makes believe that this stick is a horse, 
the identity is brought out, but the difference is 
kept ovit of sight and ignored. When the soul is 
compared to breath and the breath is made a sym- 
bol of the soul, a slender thread of identity is 
brought into prominence and the vast field of 
difference is dropped out of sight. The progress 
of the child in power of thought is indicated by 
his ability to analyze by separating the sameness, 
identity, or resemblance from the differences 
which manifest themselves. When the child notes 
a resemblance a-nd classifies an object, and at the 



X THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

same time notes differences, he has arrived at the 
stage in which he thinks a definition. The defi- 
nition first states the object's identity or resem- 
blance to something else, and secondly points out 
the difference. This is a bird, it is yellow. The 
result is the concept yellow bird; general class, 
bird; difference or limitation of the class bird to 
birds of a yellow color. This bird is an eagle, 
this bird is bald-headed: result, definition of the 
subclass, bald-headed eagle. 

Now, it is important in entering upon child 
study to note carefully the difference between 
thinking with an image and thinking-with-a-defi- 
nition. The mind of the person mature in 
thought as well as the mind of the first beginner 
forms images when he thinks general notions or 
concepts, but the mature thinker will notice that 
when he thinks an image he immediately notes its 
limitations and its inadequateness to correspond to 
the general definition which constitutes the essen- 
tial part of the general notion. When the word 
" horse " is mentioned I think at first of a gray 
horse, then I notice that I am imaging a special 
kind of horse and I imagine a sorrel-colored horse, 
and then a larger horse; one in the attitude of 
standing still, another in the attitude of running 
fast. A series of images are formed and dismissed 
as quickly as formed. In this the mind acts with- 
out reflecting upon its action. It makes images 
and at the same time notes that these images are 
mere examples or illustrations of the general con- 
cept, and that they do not exhaust it. 

The child at first forms vague and general no- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. xi 

tions. He does not seize particular objects with 
all their distinguishing characteristics. He makes 
out only a very few general marks or attributes.' 
He classes together objects which a more experi- 
enced power of thought distinguishes. 

Just as the child loses his interest in play when 
he comes to recognize numerous steps in the caus- 
ation process, so the child gives up his symbolic 
thinking, and with it his exclusive reliance on 
mental pictures, when he comes to notice not only 
identities but differences. His first definitions are 
those founded on external appearance. But with 
the growth of his mind and the observation of the 
process of causation he comes to note the function 
of the object and its actions, and he makes his 
definitions describe acts of causation. With his 
progress in observing causation the child attains 
independence of thinking and confidence in him- 
self. 

Imitation partakes of the nature of symboliz- 
ing, and it forms a very large element in play. 
It marks the first beginnings of education. The 
child who begins to imitate gives evidence of self- 
consciousness. He notices the activity of another 
fellow-being and recognizes that activity as pro- 
ceeding from an energy or will power akin to the 
power which he himself possesses. He proves to 
himself the possession of that power by imitating 
the action in which he is interested. It is evident 
that imitation, therefore, is a kind of spiritual 
assimilation, a digesting and making one's own of 
the act of another. Of course, the purpose is not 
conscious, but it is really present all the same. 



xii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Whenever children show a passionate interest 
in discovering properties and qualities in things 
it is high time for them to leave the kindergarten 
and take up the work of learning conventional 
signs, reading, writing, arithmetic, the technical 
terms of geography, etc. 

So, too, whenever the child loves to trace chains 
of causation by noticing the effect of other objects 
upon the thing which he is studying, and when he 
loves to trace out the effects of the function of 
his object upon its environment, we note the same 
ripeness and maturity of the child which enables 
him to take up work beyond the scope of the kin- 
dergarten. Such a child can not find symbolic 
plays and games perfectly congenial to him. He 
has obtained a higher stage of individual culture 
and seeks gratification which comes from testing 
his power of analysis on the external world. He 
has come to a stage of thinking above the sym- 
bolic. 

The child outgrows his feeble state of mind, 
wherein he takes the dead result for the true real- 
ity, and gradually acquires the ability to think 
the forces and powers, the causal energies, which 
bring things into existence and transform those 
things into other things. 

Imitation has the same course of development 
as the symbolic thought which passes over into 
thinking-by-definitions. At first imitation copies 
the merest external appearances. But it gradually 
gets possession of the motives and purposes of the 
action; finally, the imitator may arrive at the 
fundamental principle which originates the action. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 

Then the imitator finds no longer his guide and 
rule in an external model. He finds the rule for 
his action in his own mind and becomes original. 

The child imitates an external object. It may 
be another person or it may be an animal or a 
thing. His imitation is, as I have said, an act of 
assimilation, an act of making for himself that 
which he sees made by another, and thereby prov- 
ing his own causative power. By this action of 
imitation he therefore grows toward the feeling 
of responsibility. The act as performed by an- 
other is none of his. The act as imitated by him- 
self is his own and he is responsible for it. Imi- 
tation is therefore an act of the will, just as sym- 
bolism and thinking-by-definitions is an act of 
the intellect. But the first beginnings of imita- 
tion deal with the merest externalities of the ac- 
tion imitated. It is the " dialectic " of imitation 
to leave these externals and strive for a more and 
more internal relation toward that which it imi- 
tates. It seizes the motives and purposes of the 
action and it sees the logical necessity for these 
purposes and motives. It connects them more 
and more with its own fundamental principle of 
action. At last, when it performs the imitated 
act as an expression of its own purposes and con- 
victions, imitation has become originality. 

The child should not be hastened unduly in 
his progress out of symbolism. As long as he has 
interest and a real delight in the symbol he should 
be indulged in its employment. So, too, with 
regard to imitation. The judicious teacher will 
not seek to deepen the child's insight into motives 
2 



xiv THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

and purposes and arouse a too early feeling of re- 
sponsibility in his mind. In most cases the pres- 
sure of the society in which the child lives — a so- 
ciety mostly of grown persons possessed of a deep 
feeling of responsibility — will hasten the child's 
development into a view of moral purpose quite 
soon enough. 

W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, May 12, ISOS. 



EXPLANATORY. 



For twent}' years the subject of Child Study 
has been growing into prominence in all parts of 
this country, and many interesting and valuable 
papers and reports on various phases of the sub- 
ject have been published from time to time in lead- 
ing educational journals. Child study societies 
have been formed in scores of cities, and several 
State societies are doing a great work in conduct- 
ing inquiries on an extensive scale. Several nor- 
mal schools and colleges have been enlisted, and 
progressive teachers in all classes of schools, to- 
gether with thousands of mothers, have assisted 
the investigators by noting and reporting a multi- 
tude of facts about the life of the child as it comes 
into the world and grows into youth and manhood. 
These observations cover the development of the 
senses, the growth of perception and of the other 
mental activities, the awakening of the moral 
sense ; the emotions, the occupations, the language, 
the ambitions of children; the ideas which chil- 
dren have of their rights, of their duties to each 
other, of punishment, of natural phenomena, of 
God; the influence of environment, together with 



xvi THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

many other subjects entering into the physical and 
mental history of the child. 

So startling have been the results of these in- 
vestigation that they are already forcing a re- 
statement of several pedagogical principles and a 
general readjustment of school work and methods, 
particularly in the primary and intermediate 
grades. They are also greatly modifying the train- 
ing of the children in many homes and are quick- 
ening the teachers to increased activity and to an 
interest in the child, which promises great things 
in the near future. 

The principal aim of this book has been to 
bring the subject within the comprehension of the 
average teacher and parent. Technical terms and 
scientific formulae have been avoided as much as 
possible. The desire to announce new principles 
has been wholly subservient to that of wishing to 
serve my fellow-workers by assisting them to a 
closer relationship with the child. One has well 
said, " It is strange that the child should "be the 
last of all God's creatures to be studied scientifical- 
ly." It is still more strange, however, that we have 
been content to teach children so long without 
knowing more about them as individuals. In ex- 
plaining the work of a certain church, a lady said, 
" It's folks we're after, not things," and it is high 
time that we get after the child as much as after 
the things we teach him. 

No time has been spent on anatomical descrip- 
tions; they can easily be found in current text- 
books on physiology. Teachers and parents gener- 
ally think it extremely difficult to pursue the study 



EXPLANATORY. yvii 

of the child without at least a fair understanding 
of the elements of psychology. They often forget 
that the study will give them that very knowledge 
and that, properly pursued, it is the best possible 
introduction to psychology in general. So many 
of the outlines and syllabi submitted for their guid- 
ance presuppose such knowledge that few under- 
take to follow them. Every chapter in this book 
is an attempt to organize the knowledge already 
possessed by those who know little or nothing of 
scientific psychology, and to assist them to in- 
quiries which will give a clearer apprehension of 
the nature and possibilities of the child. 

Much child study, so called, has been done in 
such an aimless, fragmentary way that its results 
have been discouraging to some of its best friends. 
If these pages assist in dignifying and systematiz- 
ing the studv, the author will be auiply repaid. 

Little claim is made to originality in the fol- 
lowing chapters. Many of the books and period- 
icals named in the bibliography have served me in 
greater or less degree, and I cheerfully acknowledge 
my obligations to the author* for whatever of merit 
may appear. A reasonable proportion of whatever 
there may be of the opposite character the kind 
reader will also charge to them. 

I wish also to acknowledge my obligations to 
several members of the faculty of the State Nor- 
mal School for helpful suggestions. 

A. R. Taylor. 

State Normal School. Emporia, Kansas, 
June 1, 1898. 



Hilda and Josephine grew into ivomanhood as 
fast friends. Hilda married a poor but honest 
carpenter, and Josephine married a man of large 
estates who builded her a princely house. He took 
her to Europe and they visited all the great cities 
that she might purchase rare treasui'cs for its 
furnishings. When all ivas put in jjlace at home, 
Josephine sent for Hilda and showed her through 
every room. But as often as she finished explain- 
ing the figures on the carpets, the graceful folds 
of the draperies, the rich carvings of the furni- 
ture, the meanings of the pictures and the statu- 
ary that the masters had painted and chiseled, 
Hilda ivoidd say with a smile, ''It is indeed beau- 
tiful, but there is something more beautiful than 
that.'''' In disappointment, Josephine asked, 
''Hilda, what coidd be more beautiful f " Hilda 
slipped her arm into Josephine''s, as of old, and 
said, "Come with me.'''' They soon reached Hilda's 
humble home, with its plain but scrupidously 
clean white walls and doors. Little finger marks 
were seen on the door frame as they entered arid a 
glad laugh greeted them from a ruddy-faced babe 
in the cradle. Hilda turned and said, "Josephine, 
there is nothing in all your grayid home so beau- 
tiful as those finger marks on the door and the 
merry prattle of my siveet babe ! " Tears started 
to Josephine''s eyes as she folded her friend to her 
breast and said, "Hilda, you are right.'''' — After 
Eugene Field. 

xiz 



CONTENTS. 



HAPTER PAGE 

Introductory xxxvii 

I. — The senses.— Organic 1 

II. — The senses (continued). — Temperature . 7 
III. — The senses (continued). — Taste ... 13 
IV. — The senses (continued). — Smell . . .18 
V. — The senses (continued). — Touch ... 24 
VI. — The senses (continued). — Hearing . . 31 
VII. — The senses (continued).— Sight ... 41 
VIII.— The senses (continued). — General func- 
tions 54 

IX. — Consciousness and apperception ... 60 

X. — Apperception (continued). — Attention . 69 

XI.— Symbolism 76 

XII.— Language 84 

XIII. — Muscular or motor control ... 93 

XIV.— The feelings 106 

XV. — The will and its functions . . . 115 
XVI. — The intellect and its functions. — Per- 
ception, memory, and imagination . . 124 
XVII.— The intellect and its functions (contin- 
ued). — Conception, judgment, reasoning 137 

xxi 



xxii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

CHAPTER PAGK 

XVIII. — The self, habit, and character . . . 151 

XIX. — Children's instincts and plays . . . 159 

XX. — Manners and morals 168 

XXI. — Normals and abnormals . . . .179 

XXII. — Stages of growth, fatigue point, etc, . 195 

XXIIL— Conclusions 208 

Bibliography . 211 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. 



Preface by the editor, pages v to xiv. 

1. Symbolic vs. conventional. 

2. How the child outgrows the symbolic. 

3. Concepts not mental pictures but definitions. 

4. Imitation and how it grows into originality. 

Pages xxxvii to xliii. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

5. The infinite possibilities of the child. 

6. Various definitions of education. 

7. Subjects of instruction as a means. 

8. The study of the child is the study of the 

man. 

9. How and where children are to be studied. 

10. The relation of this knowledge to education. 

11. Suggestions and cautions. 

12. The place to begin. 

Chapter I, pages i to 6. 

THE ORGANIC SENSES. 

13. How the child wakes to conscious life. 

14. The significance of a sense-defect. 

xxiii 



xxiv THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

15. The need for intelligent management. 

16. The organic senses proper. 

17. Their relation to the child's temperament. 

18. The errors of ignorance. 

Chapter II, pages 7 to 11. 

THE SENSE OK TEMPERATURE. 

19. Warm, cold, and neutral spots. 

20. Differences in the temperature of children. 
2 1. Skin diseases involved in this sense. 

22. Relation of temperature to work and order. 

23. Tests for normal temperature. 

24. First sense to give knowledge of external 

world. 

25. Practical value of this sense. 

Chapter III, pages 12 to 17. 

THE SENSE OF TASTE. 

26. The origin and growth of taste. 

27. Necessity for its proper cultivation. 

28. The function of taste in knowledge-getting. 

29. Its value in the arts and sciences. 

Chapter IV, pages 18 to 23. 

THE SENSE OF SMELL. 

30. Its order in intellectual value. 

21. Relation to the physical well-being of the 

child. 
32. Diseases of the organ, symptoms and sug- 
gestions. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XX7 

33. The aesthetic value of smell. 

34. Its value in the arts and sciences. 

Chapter V, pages 24 to 30. 

THE SENSE OF TOUCH. 

35. Its nature. 

36. Its function in giving knowledge of the ex- 

ternal world. 

37. Its various functions in the physical economy. 

38. Distinction between passive and active touch. 

39. The office of symbolism in touch. 

40. The extent of its cultivation — Helen Kellar. 

Chapter VI, pages 31 to 40. 

THE SENSE OF HEARING. 

41. How it differs from the senses already named. 

42. Stage of development at birth. 

43. Necessity for its careful protection. 

44. Its great intellectual value in giving knowl- 

edge (a) through pitch, (/') through in- 
tensity, (c) through quality or timbre, (</) 
of direction, (e) of distance. 

45. Its aesthetic value. 

46. Its practical value. 

47. Relation to language. 

Chapter VII, pages 41 to 53. 

THE SENSE OF SIGHT. 

48. The king of the senses. 

49. How the newborn child sees. 



xxvi THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

50. Its intellectual value. 

51. The knowledge given by the purely visual 

function of the eye. 

52. The union of the visual and muscular sensa- 

tions. 

53. Dependence of sight upon touch — symbolism. 

54. The aesthetic value of sight. 

55. The care of the eye — diseases and tests. 

Chapter VIII, pages 54 to 59. 

GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF THE SENSES. 

56. The means of communicating with the exter- 

nal world. 

57. The action of the sensory nerves. 

58. The dependence of the mind upon the deli- 

cacy of the senses. 

59. The sensation cofitirtuuni. 

60. Relative prominence of sensations in the life 

of the child and adult. 

61. How the senses are cultivated. 

Chapter IX, pages 60 to 68. 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPERCEPTION. 

62. The bridge from the physical to the mental. 

63. How sensations come into consciousness. 

64. The rise of the idea of identity and difference. 

65. The process of apperception. 

66. How knowledge and experience organize a 

child. 

67. The law of apperception. 

68. The law of association. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xxvii 

Chapter X, pages 69 to 75. 

APPERCEPTION (CONTINUED) — ATTENTION. 

69. The function of interest. 

70. Value, the law of. 

71. The law of interest. 

72. The law of disengagement or dissociation. 

73. Attention and concentration. 

74. Accuracy, rapidity, and comprehension in 

attention. 

75. Apperception — when complete. 

76. Definition of relation. 

Chapter XI, pages 76 to 83. 

SYMBOLISM. 

77. An object the expression of an idea. 

78. Words as symbols. 

79. The symbolizing power of sensations 

80. Symbolism in mythology, religion, philoso 

phy. 

81. The story of the symbols. 

82. The meaning of symbols is universal. 

83. Gradations in symbols. 

Chapter XII, pages 84 to 92. 

LANGUAGE. 

84. Symbolism makes language possible. 

85. Children invent language. 

86. How children learn the meaning of words — 

I, 2, 3, 4, 5. 



xxviii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

87. The differences in the language of children 

— their cause. 

88. Learning words by imitation. 

89. Function of words in memory. 

90. Suggestions for inquiries. 

91. Transition periods in the use of words. 

92. Transition from the oral to the written word. 

Chapter XIII, pages 93 to 105. 

MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 

93. Relation of sensory and motor nerves. 

94. Movement originates in reflex actions. 

95. The motive power in physical impulse; defi- 

nition of impulse. 

96. The child's organism set up with *' com- 

pressed springs." 

97. Mental origin of certain impulses. 

98. How control develops. 

99. Differences in physical control in children. 
ICO. Relation to education. 

loi. Motor control in gesture, speech, drawing, 
writing, vision, facial expression, and man- 
ual dexterity in general. 

102. Causes of inability to control the movements 

of any organ. 

103. Kinds of movements best adapted to the 

younger children. 

104. Relation of thought and action. 

105. Relation of nerve centers to muscular con- 

trol. Dr. Emerson's views. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xxix 

Chapter XIV, pages io6 to 114. 

THE FEELINGS. 

106. The nature of feelings in general. 

107. Sensations as feeUngs. 

108. Emotions ; origin and relation to mental ac- 

tivity. 

109. The mingling of sensations and emotions, 
no. Relation of emotional nature and physical 

organism. 

111. Classification of emotions. 

112. Affections — loves and likes. 

113. Origin and growth of the affections in chil- 

dren. 

114. Desires and their relation to impulse. 

Chapter XV, pages 115 to 123. 

THE WU.L AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 

Y IIS- The elements of the will in voluntary bodily 
activity. 

116. Definition and origin of will activity. 

117. Desires in relation to the will. 

118. Choice, motive, and volition. 

119. The idealizing and realizing functions of the 

will. 

120. Intellectual control. 

121. Control economizes time and energy. 

122. Practical and prudential control. 

123. Suggested lines of investigation. 

124. The educational process as affected by the 

will. 
3 



XXX THE STUDY OF THE CHILD, 

125. The reactive effect of the various kinds 

of control upon the character of the 
child. 

126. These forces lead to moral control. 

Chapter XVI, pages 124 to 136. 

THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS — PERCEPTION, MEMORY, 
AND IMAt",INATION. 

127. Consciousness, apperception, and attention 

have already been explained. 

128. Definition of perception — its relation to ap- 

perception. 

129. The laws of association apply to perception 

as well as to apperception, 

130. Experimenting in perception. 

131. Memory and its functions: (a) As related to 

perception and apperception ; (d) as re- 
lated to the reasoning process; (c) as re- 
lated to prudential control ; (d) as related 
to our happiness; (e) as related to lan- 
guage. 

132. Recollection is memory under the control 

and direction of the will. 
^33- Suggested inquiries on memory and recol- 
lection. 

134. Conditions of memory. 

135. Imagination — nature and functions. 

136. Kinds of imagination: (a) Mechanical, (3) 

fancy, (r) creative. 

137. Testing the imagination of children. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xxxi 

138. Relation of the three image-building activities 

— perception, memory, and imagination. 

139. Active and passive phases of imagination. 

140. The cultivation of the imagination. 

Chapter XVII, pages 137 to iso. 

THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS (CONTINUED) CONCEP- 
TION, JUDGMENT, AND REASONING. 

141. The twofold significance of the term con- 

ception. 

142. Process of the development of a conception. 

143. Definition and illustration of conception. 

144. Analysis of the process: (i) Attention and 

isolation; (2) comparison; (3) abstrac- 
tion ; (4) synthesis. 

145. Suggested experiments with the child. 

146. Definition and function of judgment. 

147. Elements in a judgment. 

148. Accuracy depends upon — i, 2, 3. 

149. The way the child judges. 

150. Judgment as implicit reasoning. 

151. Definition of the reasoning process. 

152. The syllogism and its elements. 

153. The deductive process explained. 

154. The inductive process and its functions. 

155. The nature of proof; depends upon obser- 

vation, experimentation, and reasoning. 

156. The physical side to reasoning and the other 

mental activities. 

157. The origin and development of the reason- 

ing faculty in the child. 



xxxii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Chapter XVIII, pages isi to 158. 

THE SELF, HABIT, AND CHARACTER. 

158. The definition of self. 

159. How the child makes himself. 

160. Definition and functions of habit. 

161. Education and habit. 

162. Habit and character. 

163. Origin and kinds of habit. 

164. Suggested inquiries on children's habits. 

165. Effect of plays. 

Chapter XIX, pages 159 to 167. 
children's instincts and plays. 

166. Instincts and impulses. 

167. The order in which instincts develop. 

168. The various products of instincts and im- 

pulses. 

169. The social instinct, the impulse to fellow- 

ship. 

170. How it develops in the child. 

171. The plays of children, their nature and im- 

portance. 

172. The most popular plays; the range needs 

revision. 

173. Children should be taught how to play. 

\ 174. Play as related to the child's future occu- 
pations. 
175. Effects of play upon the child's social life. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTEXTS. xxxiii 

Chapter XX, pages i68 to 178. 

MANNERS AND MORALS. 

176. The relation of the social to the moral in- 

stinct. 

177. Some code of manners common to all people. 

178. Politeness should not be confused with good 

manners. 

179. The development of good manners in chil- 

dren largely dependent upon good man- 
ners in the home. 

180. The virtues that lie at the basis of good 

manners. 

181. Suggested inquiries concerning the manners 

of children. 

182. Origin of the moral instinct. 

183. Relation of moral to prudential control. 

184. The child's first impulses are to be true; 

illustrations. 

185. When moral character appears. 

186. Tests for the children. 

187. The three elements in moral culture — right 

knowing, xight loving, and right doing. 

188. Conscience defined and analyzed — i, 2, 3, 

4. 5- 

189. The development of right motives is the 

most delicate problem in education. 

190. Simple rules for their development — i, 2, 3, 

4, 5, 6. 



xxxiv THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 
Chapter XXI, pages 179 to 194, 

NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 

191. Distinction between normals and abnormals. 

192. Precocious and defective children. 

193. Inherited diseases and deformities may be 

due {a) to similar diseases or deformities 
in parents, (d) to constitutional weakness 
of parents, or (c) to bad habits of parents. 
Authorities cited in support of statement. 

194. Inherited physical deformity usually means 

mental deformity. Maudsley's views. 

195. The gradations from the strictly normal to 

the completely unbalanced mind. Super- 
intendent Klock's conclusions. 

196. Relation of physical and mental defectives 

to moral defectives. 

197. Four classes of moral defectives. 

198. Causes of moral defection: [a) Heredity; 

(3) environment ; (c) education and train- 
ing. 

199. Illustrations of the injustice of teachers and 

others in the treatment of offenders. 

200. Belated development in children — causes and 

remedies. 

201. Suggested investigations. Time to be given 

to abnormals. 



ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. xxxv 

Chapter XXII, pages 195 to 207. 

STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT, ETC. 

202. Infancy, childhood, and youth ; character- 

istics of each. Changes in transition from 
one to another. 

203. Ideals and motives changing; methods of 

management must change also. 

204. Stage of development should determine the 

kind of punishment to be administered. 

205. The fatigue point in children — illustrations; 

causes and remedies; school programs. 

206. The aesthetic instinct — its origin, growth, and 

function ; relation to the true and the good. 

207. The unconscious or subconscious influences 

that affect the child. Waldstein's views 
of the relation of the conscious and un- 
conscious influences. Illustrations of the 
effect of the latter upon language, upon 
character. 

208. The general function of sympathy ; origin 

of sympathy. The test of the true teacher. 

Chapter XXIII, pages 208 to 210. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

209. Topics suggested for additional study. 

210. Teachers' clubs; mothers' clubs. 

211. Bibliography. 



mTRODUCTORY. 



If asked for the name of that which is at once 
most like and most unlike God, almost any one 
would answer, The lobe in the cradle. In it are 
all the attributes of God, but they are there in 
potentia only. They are there in kind, but in the 
least quantity that can possibly exist. God has 
the same attributes, but in quantity limitless, in 
knowledge boundless, in majesty supreme. Be- 
tween these two extremes are men in all stages of 
development. If we represent the progress or the 
growth of the child toward God by a triangle, we 
shall find the babe at the apex, h, the youth slight- 
ly out on the base line at y, and the growing man 




at different stages, m, m', m", m'", beyond, in vary- 
ing development up toward God standing at the 
other end of the base and filling the triangle at an 
infinite distance away. How near the apex some 
men remain ! How far on toward God some men 
advance! Who knows just where stand Moses 



xxxviii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

and Plato and Paul and Bacon and Milton and 
Kepler and Newton and Knox and Mozart and 
Wesley, and all that mighty host of men who 
walked amid the stars and dared to think God's 
thoughts after him? On, on to the right, away 
beyond the ken of ordinary mortals, they are still 
advancing in wisdom and power that one day, it 
is said reverently, shall make them approach even 
to God himself. 

Here lies in my hand a 3'oung bird; all it can 
be, all it can do, may now be written at once by 
any one. Who dare say what that babe lying in 
yonder cradle shall be and do? Who is able to 
place a limit upon the result of its efforts at reach- 
ing up toward the Infinite? 

Various attempts have been made to state the 
object of education. Plato would have it to be the 
perfection of all the powers of man. Dante de- 
clared it to be to fit man for eternity. Milton 
thought it to be to regain what man lost in 
Adam's fall. Spencer says that it is to prepare 
man for complete living. Eosenkranz makes the 
object to be to develop the theoretical f.nd practical 
reason in man, to give him freedom. Few, how- 
ever, seem to emphasize fully the idea that its end 
is to advance the youth in his efforts to become 
like the Infinite. In his image is he created, and 
every activity exerted should be a striving to real- 
ize the possibilities thus assured. 

Much has been written upon the sacredness of 
the child and the great responsibility resting upon 
parent and teacher; but however keenly any one 
may have felt it all, there come a weightier sig- 



INTRODUCTORY. xxxix 

nificance and a deeper meaning as this higher end 
of education becomes more clear. He no longer 
teaches geography and arithmetic as an end but as 
a means. He no longer finds satisfaction in dis- 
covering that his children know all about trade 
winds and simooms, about Aristides and George 
Washington, about the Faerie Queene and Evange- 
line, but rather in discovering that their minds 
are growing in power to think and that the}^ are 
enlarging in grasp and vision with each day's 
efforts. 

In studying the child, we are in reality study- 
ing the man. In studying it, Ave are enabled to 
see the steps by which the material becomes spir- 
itual, blind ]jhysical impulse becomes unerring- 
skill, the finite becomes the infinite. The proper 
study of mankind is man, but he who knows not 
the child will never know the man. 

All other sciences center around the science of 
the child, for there is no other which does not 
contribute in some way to our understanding of 
him. Those upon which we must depend most 
directly are, of course, anatomy, physiology, and 
hygiene, with all their various subdivisions; ethics, 
logic, and psychology, including their genetic and 
practical phases. It was out of the study of man 
that these sciences came, and on that account they 
are valuable as guides to the study of the child. 

No one can profitably engage in child study 
without children to study — not one child only, but 
many children. Some valuable contributions to 
the subject have been made by those who have 
devoted their time to the study of one child, but 



xl THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

only as the results of a large number of such in- 
vestigations are collated can any reliable infer- 
ences be drawn. Heading about children is not 
studying children, and little good will come of it. 
They must be studied in their homes, in their 
plays, in the schoolroom, at their work, at their 
books, asleep, awake, alone, with their inferiors 
and their superiors, in moments of despondency 
and in moments of triumph, wherever they may 
reveal themselves to us and wherever we may be 
able to gain admittance to their real selves. Some 
children will be found apt, wide-awake, aggressive; 
others slow, sluggish, passive. Some have perfect 
physical organisms, others defective eyesight or 
hearing, or possibly a growing deformity in limb 
or body. Some imitate instantly, others have lit- 
tle motor control. Some are as lovable as angels; 
others vicious to an extreme. Some will be found 
simple and natural; others artificial and affected; 
some tractable, others unmanageable. 

But these discoveries are worth nothing, if the 
study of the children ends here. A physician is 
of no value if he stops when he has taken the 
diagnosis of a case. He must now proceed with 
the application of a remedy, a process that requires 
even greater skill. So the student of the child 
must immediately set abovit to discover the most 
economic means and methods of correcti^ig the 
defects in the child and of stimulating its nor- 
mal activities. All these investigations should re- 
sult in giving us an idea of what constitutes a 
normal child and in helpins: to understand the 
laws of his development. Many people are as ex- 



INTRODUCTORY. xli 

acting in their demands of the child as they are of 
a full-grown man or woman, forgetting absolutely 
the great difference between the two — physically, 
mentally, and morally. It is of vital importance 
that we know what we may expect of the child. 
Nearly as many children are ruined by the un- 
reasonable demands made upon them as by the 
neglect sadly too common. How quickly and gen- 
erously do the flowers respond to the tender, in- 
telligent tovich of the housewife — and yet even 
more generously does the child respond to the 
solicitations of one who knows its impulses and 
sympathizes with its every need. 

Much of value will be found in recalling one's 
childhood and the experiences and impressions of 
those days when the heart was young and the 
mind was thrilling at its first acquaintance with 
things that long since have been regarded as 
commonplace and insignificant. This process 
helps us to put ourselves in the place of the child, 
and to think and feel as he thinks and feels. 
Memory may not be very clear on many points, 
but what does reappear brings us much nearer to 
the child than we were before. 

Caution should always be observed and hasty 
generalizations avoided. One swallow does not 
make a summer, neither does one observation es- 
tablish a law. The slightest change in conditions 
has overthrown many a finely spun theory. We 
are dealing with the mind, not with physical 
forces. The most sensitive instrument ever in- 
vented by man does not compare with it in deli- 
cacy. The impulses that direct its activities come 



xlii THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

from depths that no plummet has yet fathomed, 
and progress must necessarily be slow. 

Do not forget that the study you are asked 
to make is not necessarily for the purpose of 
contributing the results to the profession in gen- 
eral, but rather for the particular benefit of your 
particular children and of yourself as their 
teacher. Your enlightenment and their advance- 
ment are more important than anything else. 
Let love and interest in them and in them alone 
prompt you in it all. 

Child study generally begins with the babe's 
first conscious movements, though an exhaustive 
treatment of the subject would include its pre- 
natal life as well. Those of our readers who may 
care to know more of the various views of the 
genesis of certain physical and mental activities 
would do well to consult Perez's First Three Years 
of Childhood, Preyer's The Senses and the Will, 
and Compayre's Intellectual and Moral Develop- 
ment of the Child. 

The mystery of conscious life, both in its ori- 
gin and development, confronts us at .the very 
beginning of the study. No other phenomenon in 
the universe approaches it in sublimity, no other 
so fascinates us by its delicate subtleness. The 
force of gravitation that liolds the stars in their 
courses, the fervent heat that melts down moun- 
tains and tosses them into the sky, the bolt of 
lightning that shivers the towering monarchs of 
the forest, powerful though they be, know not 
themselves nor direct a single one of their myriad 
activities. That strange and wonderful attribute, 



INTRODUCTORY. xliii 

conscious life, is reserved for the child, the man. 
It sits ruler and king over every activity of the 
soul and over the mighty forces that hitherto have 
recognized no master save their Creator. 

As the senses awaken the child into this con- 
scious life, they are treated in the opening chap- 
ters. 



THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SENSES. — OEGANIC. 

It is through the senses that the child wakes 
to conscious life, through these that he becomes ac- 
quainted with the outer world, which he is to know 
and of which he is to become a counterpart. With- 
out them the child lies dormant in his cradle, 
sleeping away his days, not even knowing of an 
outer world, nor dreaming of his own mighty pos- 
sibilities. With his senses he explores the universe 
round about him and eventually becomes its mas- 
ter. Upon their sensitiveness and perfection his 
progress depends. No greater joy comes to a new 
mother than the assurance that the child has a 
perfect body and perfect eyes and ears, but it is 
seldom that she recognizes the full significance of 
such a boon. Those eyes and ears are not only 
to enable him to place himself in space and com- 
municate with his fellows, but to furnish him the 
materials, the food upon which his mind is to feed 
and grow. They are not only to give him a knowl- 
edge of the sensuous world round about him, but 
also of those higher relations and harmonies that 
knit soul with soul and with the Infinite. 
4 1 



2 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

It is important that mother and teacher know 
at once the tremendous significance of any phys- 
ical defect, particularly as it may in any way per- 
tain to the nervous system of the child. What- 
ever disturbs or obstructs, however slightly, the 
natural and spontaneous movement of the sensor 
or motor activities may have a vast influence in 
shaping the intellectual life and the moral char- 
acter of the child. Two seemingly parallel straight 
lines may he hut an inch apart at their origin and 
yet he ten feet apart at the end of a mile. Intel- 
lectual dullness and moral obliquity are usually 
due to some physical deformity, though often so 
insignificant as to escape notice. 

Some time since, twenty bad boys in a certain 
city were chosen for the sense test, and it was dis- 
covered that every one of them was defective in 
vision or hearing, or both. Twenty good children 
were selected, and it happened that all Avere perfect 
in both senses. It would be dangerous to general- 
ize from this that all physical defectives are moral- 
ly defective, or that all perfect nervous systems 
are morally without reproach, but that the tend- 
ency of each is here emphasized there can be no 
question. A sound mind in a sound body means 
more than that the body should be healthy; it 
means that every part of the physical organ- 
ism should be continuously and efficiently per- 
forming its proper function. There are notable 
cases of individuals, physically defective from 
birth, attaining to great mental power and spir- 
itual excellence, but at what cost few people can 
imagine. 



THE SENSES.—ORGANIC. 3 

Though derangement may not clearly manifest 
itself in the young child, its presence may often be 
detected by an expert and corrected by judicious 
treatment. Many an eye that was weak at birth 
has been put out by ignorant or careless nurses; 
many an ear that scarce had taken form has been 
ruined by those who loved the child best. Many 
a child has lost one sense or both through the 
neglect of ignorance or caprice. On the other 
hand, physicians tell us that one half of the 
children with defective hearing can easily be 
cured, if taken in time; the same is true of 
those defective in eyesight. Is this, then, 
a light theme to which we are giving atten- 
tion? 

It does not seem wise to spend much time in 
discussing the lower senses, for they give us little 
knowledge, comparatively speaking. And yet they 
are of the highest importance. All those sensa- 
tions which may be embraced under the one term, 
organic, such as the feeling arising from the gen- 
eral state of the body or of the vital and vegetative 
organs, make up the tone of the body as a whole 
and give it that peculiar physical character which 
manifests itself in what is known as the tempera- 
ment of the individual. The general disposition 
of the child is so largely determined by the degree 
of perfection with which the digestive, assimilative, 
circulatory, respiratory, and lymphatic functions 
are performed, that no student of the child can 
afford to overlook them. The old notion that the 
bile exercises a controlling influence over the dis- 
position of the individual is simply expanded in 



4 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

these days to embrace all the forces named above. 
That a child whose stomach is souring and efferves- 
cing half the day should be amiable and attentive 
to his work, can not be expected; that one whose 
circulation is heavy and sluggish should naturally 
be apt and quick in perception and response, is out 
of harmony with all experience; that one "wdiose 
physical condition is never animated nor buoyant, 
can without effort be cheerful and aggressive, is one 
of the things few thoughtful people believe. And 
yet, in spite of all this, we are almost continually 
overlooking the physical cause of children's tem- 
peraments and dispositions, and seeking to correct 
them by scolding, punishing, and other traditional 
and irrational remedies. Often a child has been 
whipped for failing to complete work assigned in 
an allotted time, when the effort required would 
have completely prostrated him ; he has been boxed 
for restlessness, when one good, wholesome meal 
would have appeased a hunger that would not let 
him be still; he has been ridiculed for melancholy 
that diet and exercise only could drive away; he 
has been degraded for failing to prepare a lesson, 
when headache or indigestion were wholly re- 
sponsible. Fretfulness, restlessness, ennui, indiffer- 
ence, stupidity, willfulness, timidity, nervousness, 
impulsiveness, and many kindred mental maladies 
in children that perplex and annoy and defeat the 
teacher and parent are the natural products of 
disorders in digestion, circulation, or some other 
purely physiological function. It is nothing less 
than a crime for any one to ignore the real cause 
of such manifestations in the child and to attempt 



THE SENSES.— ORGANIC. 5 

to correct them by reproof and punishment. Such 
treatment only aggravates the trouble, soon mak- 
ing it chronic, whereas a rational treatment would 
generally give permanent physical relief and then 
the mental distemper would easily yield, often even 
disappearing of its own accord. There are few 
full-grown men and women of such equable tem- 
peraments that they are not more or less disturbed 
by similar causes. If this be the case with those 
whose wills have been trained through a course 
of 3^ears, how much more it must be true of chil- 
dren whose every action is dictated so largely by 
physical impulses. 

These facts need neither elaboration nor illus- 
tration; but they do need repetition and empha- 
sis. Many a child has been roughly shaken for 
crying, when a pin was later discovered to be the 
cause of the trouble. Others have been dosed and 
drugged for peevishness that was caused by thirst 
only. Others, again, have been Jolted on a friendly 
but a villainously mistaken knee for screaming, 
when every jolt but intensified the awful pain 
with which colic was already stabbing the child. 
Thus blindly do we attempt to relieve and correct 
the physical and mental ills of the babe. Do we 
approach it with more wisdom when it is five 
years of age? If the healthy action of these 
various organic functions is so important in the 
formation of the child's temperament and dis- 
position, then a thorough theoretical and prac- 
tical knowledge of food principles, of hygiene, 
of symptoms and remedies, of the structure, 
development, and function of every organ of 



6 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the body, as well as of the relations of all these 
to the psychical activities, is little enough to 
demand of every mother. That such knowledge 
is uncommon makes the need of it the more com- 
mon. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — TEMPERATURE. 

The organic senses just mentioned embrace 
those senses not so clearly differentiated in the 
consciousness as the six senses generally recog- 
nized. They give us a knowledge of muscular 
movement, of hunger and thirst, of fatigue, of 
respiration, of disease, feelings of relish, of de- 
pression, of exhilaration, etc. Few of them are 
localized. They pertain rather to the system as a 
whole than to any particular part of it. 

The sense of temperature is now clearly dis- 
tinguished from the sense of touch and really 
makes the seventh sense, if those above mentioned 
are still embraced in the term organic. Take a 
toothpick or a sharp-pointed lead pencil and touch 
various parts of the palm of the hand and it will 
sometimes appear warm and sometimes cold, with 
occasional places where neither effect appears. By 
the use of delicate instruments the presence and 
location of these warm, cold, and neutral spots 
have been definitely determined and mapped. It 
would appear that certain nerve filaments have 
special temperature functions entirely distinct 
from those of touch. That the warm and cold 
spots arc more numerous and more sensitive in 

7 



8 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

some people than in others is readily seen in the 
ease with which some people handle hot bars, hot 
plates, etc., or with which they put their hands or 
feet into hot water, or drink hot liquids, while 
others are almost thrown into spasms when they 
attempt it. The character of the epidermis — the 
outer skin — has much to do with the sensitiveness 
to heat or cold. The calloused hand of a black- 
smith or a cook enables him to handle hot pokers 
and stove lids that would blister the tender fingers 
of a child. A mother not infrequently scalds the 
feet of her child by forcing them into water which 
is " hardly warm " to her toughened fingers, and 
so brings on disorders far more serious than that 
which she was striving to cure. Many a babe's 
mouth is sorely blistered by a hot gargle that the 
nurse, accustomed to drink boiling-hot tea three 
times a day, declares to be " just warm, now 
dearie." Hot plasters and poultices are clapped 
on the little innocents without intelligence or 
mercy for the same reasons, and incalculable in- 
jury is thus done to a multitude of children. 

Incidentally, it should here be mentioned that 
some children are naturally warmer-blooded and 
need less clothing than others; they are often suf- 
fering from the heat in a room where others are 
perfectly comfortable. They need food with more 
nitrogenous and less fatty material in it than their 
colder-blooded fellows. I had a neighbor whose 
veins were always surcharged with rich blood, who 
kept his home four or five degrees cooler in win- 
ter than the normal, 68° to 70°, and his children 
with thinner blood were constantly suffering more 



THE SENSES.— TEMPERATURE. 9 

or less in consequence. Another, with sluggish 
arteries, kept his home so warm that his boys and 
girls, inheriting their mother's vigorous tempera- 
ment, were often nervously prostrate. They took 
cold nearly everywhere they went, and certain seri- 
ous ills were surely chargeable to nothing else. 

If this were strictly a mother's book, I would 
enter into details concerning a variety of skin dis- 
eases in which the temperature sense is more or less 
involved, and which contribute their full share 
toward the development of the disposition of the 
child, but I shall content myself with a mere refer- 
ence to them and with a reminder that there are 
far higher reasons for getting rid of them prompt- 
ly than merely for the sake of the comfort and 
health of the child. 

Sufficient has been said, however, to show the 
teacher the necessity of studying the temperature 
problem as applied to every child in his classes. 
It is impossible to have an equable temperature in 
every part of a room, particularly when heated by 
a stove, but it is possible to put the colder-blooded 
and the thinly clad near the stove and the others 
in more distant parts of the room. It is also 
possible to manage the heat so as to keep it near 
the normal. The health of the children requires 
it; comfort, good order, and effective instruction 
are impossible without it. Friendly feeling and 
interest in work seldom develop in a cold room; 
reflective thought and keen analysis are paralyzed 
in a hot one. Many teachers owe their failure in 
keeping order to inability to keep the schoolroom 
properly ventilated and heated. 



10 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

The test for the normal temperature of a child 
is possibly best made by conferring with the 
mother, and by a few inquiries of the child him- 
self from day to day. Thermometers applied to 
the body will be of little avail. It will take but 
a week or two for a teacher to discover whether 
a pupil is above or below the average normal and 
to seat him accordingly. Of course, he should not 
make the mistake of thinking that temperature 
alone must decide the question of location. Some 
children are very sensitive to draughts, while others 
seem to be affected little by them. The seeds of 
permanent ill health or of fatal disease may easily 
be given root in a single day by neglecting these 
precautions. 

Two seemingly parallel straiglit lines may he hut 
an inch apart at their origin and yet he ten feet apart 
at the end of a mile. 80 these little things may not 
seem of much moment at present, hut in a few years 
their effect is too sadly realized. 

The intellectual value of the senses thus far 
mentioned is very small. They simply give us a 
knowledge of the condition of the physical organ- 
ism in a general and in a specific way; some of 
them not even localizing a disorder or a want of 
the body — as thirst, hunger, etc. The temperature 
sense is easily recognized as one step higher in the 
series, for it not only gives us a knowledge of the 
general temperature of the body, but of individual 
parts of the body as well. Further, it is the first to 
give us a knowledge of the external world, but 
even that knowledge is limited to the simple in- 
formation concerning its temperature as com- 



THE SENSES.— TEMPERATURE. H 

pared with that of the body. While the others per- 
mit a child to say, " I am hungry, I am tired, I 
feel my hand moving, I have the colic, I am sick 
at the stomach," this sense permits him to say, " I 
am cold,'*^ and to add, " It is cold," meaning some- 
thing outside of himself, as the air, a chair, water, 
the bed, the poker, etc. 

The organic senses give him immediate knowl- 
edge of his physical well- or ill-being only, while 
his skill in many of the arts is dependent in large 
measure upon the delicacy with which he discrimi- 
nates temperature. The thermometer serves a 
useful purpose in many of them, but if the artisan 
relies upon it alone he will be a poor workman in- 
deed. The need, then, of great care in cultivat- 
ing this sense for the sake of bodily comfort and 
bodily health is almost equaled by the practical 
demands made in everyday life. Few more help- 
less creatures can be imagined than those who have 
lost the sense by which they appreciate heat or 
cold, and so are liable to sustain frightful injury 
without being conscious of it until it is revealed 
by some other sense. So, in a practical way, how 
sorry a laundress is the girl who has not learned 
how to test the temperature of her sadiron, or how 
provoking is a cook who is unable to discover the 
right temperature of her oven by a single sweep 
of her hand, how culpable is a housekeeper or a 
teacher if she lack in ability to notice the changes 
in the temperature of the rooms in which the chil- 
dren live. A part, then, of every child's education 
is to learn how to use this sense skillfully and 
profitably. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE SENSES (continued). — TASTE. 

Possibly the first sense to begin differentiat- 
ing is that of taste. Tlie first food entering the 
moutli not only satisfies hunger, but is grateful 
to the taste as well. It may be that the newborn 
child is provided with taste buds that respond 
even more generously than they do later, for the 
specific purpose of encouraging it to take the food 
Nature has provided. At any rate, a very short 
time suffices to enable it to discriminate between 
the sweet and wholesome milk and the insipid or 
adulterated article, as many nurses can fully tes- 
tify. From such a simple beginning, skill in dis- 
tinguishing among foods grovv^s until many thou- 
sand different kinds can easily be detected. So 
highly may this sense be educated that it is said 
that expert tea tasters in the employ of the great 
tea houses can easily recognize as high as fifty dif- 
ferent kinds of teas that have been mixed and 
steeped together. Epicures and lovers of the table 
in general are not necessarily gormands and glut- 
tons, for they find their highest enjoyment not 
in the amount they eat, but rather in its ability to 
awaken pleasurable taste. Ten times more labor 
is put upon foods and drinks to make them pala- 
12 



THE SENSES.— TASTE. 13 

table than is put upon them to make them whole- 
some. Nine cooks out of ten work to tickle the 
palate more than to insure ready digestion. The 
" best " things at the average table are those that 
awaken a new and pleasing sensation at the time 
of eating, rather than comfort afterward. Even 
the staples come to the table with subtle flavors 
that the ingenuity of the cook has dexterously 
added. Fruits in incredible variety are cultivated, 
not so much for their nutritive quality as for their 
ability to awaken corresponding variety in relish. 
The forests of the earth are searched for nuts and 
oils and leaves and roots that may stimulate a 
wider range of pleasure in the mouth of man. 
Luxuries, those dishes that delight the palate but 
serve little as tissue builders, cost us more money 
than the necessaries of life. Many men are kept 
poor to the end of their days because most of their 
earnings go into this red-hot hopper! More sick- 
ness and physical misery are caused by eating 
highly seasoned food than by any dozen other 
causes combined. That which Nature designed as 
a gentle stimulus to taste and to digestion has 
too generally become the scourge to both. Nature 
intended that taste and digestion should be warm 
friends: we have often made them bitter enemies. 
Then, for purely physical reasons, the proper cul- 
tivation of the sense of taste assumes proportions 
in the care and culture of the child that few peo- 
ple understand. It is just as important as exer- 
cise or sleep. 

Parents insist on their children eating slowly 
and chewing their food well, but, while that is es- 



14 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

sential, there are other weighty things in the law 
also. When they are apprehended, they will read 
somewhat as follows: 

For the first dozen years of a child's life his 
sense of taste should be developed with the same 
care as the control and use of his voluntary muscles 
or of any of the organs of the body. Highly sea- 
soned foods and stimulating drinks should seldom 
be given him. On the contrary, wholesome food 
in sufficient variety of kind and flavor should be 
given to make eating a pleasure and to maintain 
easy digestion and healthy growth. Children's 
appetites are the best spices at any table. If they 
be wanting, it is poor economy to resort to arti- 
ficial means. It frequently happens that a child 
refuses every dish on the table and clamors for 
one that his rugged father finds it difficult to 
digest. It is better that he eat nothing until the 
next meal than to yield to his appeal. A month's 
indulgence in such demands often insures dys- 
pepsia before the child is twenty years of age. 
Of course, it is as cruel and unreasonable to force 
children to eat things for which they have an aver- 
sion, as it would be to force them to look at colors 
that pain the eye. With very few resources and 
very little tact any mother may easily discover 
what suitable dishes her children like and provide 
them in sufficient variety to make every meal a 
delight. Simple foods satisfy children, and the 
change should come in variety and not in sea- 
soning. 

This is not the place to enter into the discus- 
sion of the subject of the preparation of food, but 



THE SENSES.— TASTE. 15 

it should be said that the art of cooking is being 
revolutionized in these da3's, and that what a poor 
cook has been covering up with sugar and salt and 
pepper and spices, the new cook is presenting in 
both a palatable and a digestible form with the 
merest suggestion of the spice box. All hail to the 
new system, but it has a great work yet to do in 
solving the problem for the normal development of 
the sense of taste in the child. With that under 
proper control, the health problem solves more 
easily. 

The sense of taste is not to be cultivated by 
suppressing and confining it to a few foods. The 
greater the number and variety of the simpler 
forms, Nature's own productions, the less demand 
will there be for foods of the hot tamale order. 
But even here great harm may be done in nurtur- 
ing a desire for change that may react, begetting 
disorders similar to those just mentioned. The 
intimate relationship between the mind and the 
vegetative system is so close that the former can 
never be ignored in considering the food problem. 
Imagination and emotion powerfully affect both 
taste and digestion. The course to be pursued in 
the case of each individual child can only be de- 
termined as his tastes, already awakening, are dis- 
covered and the resources of his family are known. 
Then the problem for the mother is not to find 
ways and means for pandering to them, but for 
correcting and educating them. Lectures may do 
them little good, but the right kind of dishes will 
sooner or later accomplish the end. 

Not only is all this to be done for the sake of 



16 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the health of the child, but for his moral char- 
acter as well. Taste for highly seasoned food and 
stimulating drinks almost invariably becomes ap- 
petite, consuming and uncontrollable, later in life. 
Its long train of evils need not be rehearsed here. 
No heart is so pure, no soul so noble, that phys- 
ical appetite long unrestrained does not corrupt. 
Every mother has it in her power to form the 
tastes and appetites of her children. They are 
always formed, but the process of re-forming is 
frequently a heartbreaking failure. Crimes hide- 
ous and revolting might easily have been prevented 
by a little intelligence and firmness in shaping the 
tastes of the child for food and drink. Nothing 
ever written is truer than this. 

This sense is also intended to contribute to 
man's physical enjoyment. Its proper cultivation 
refines and enlarges that enjoyment not only in 
a sensuous way, but in an intellectual way as well. 
So intimately is the delicate discrimination of 
foods allied to good judgment in an intellectual, 
and particularly in an aesthetic way, that the 
word taste is universally used in distinguishing 
men and women of refined culture from those of 
the commoner sort. 

The sense of taste is used in many of the arts 
and sciences, though possibly not so generally as 
that of smell and the others to be mentioned here- 
after. Every good cook — and half of the human 
race ought to be good cooks — needs a highly culti- 
vated taste to test the quality of her mixtures and 
dishes; she is helpless without it. The mineralo- 
gist, the grocer, the pharmacist, the physician, the 



THE SENSES.— TASTE 17 

fruit dealer, the confectioner, the dairyman, the 
restaurateur, the baker, and many other profes- 
sional, industrial, and commercial people find 
highly developed taste invaluable. A great army 
of men and women are employed in the prepara- 
tion and sale of foods. The excellence of every 
pound prepared or sold is dependent upon the de- 
gree of cultivation of the taste of manufacturer 
and tradesman. Everywhere you turn you easily 
see the practical value of an educated taste. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — SMELL. 

In the order of intellectual value the sense 
of smell is next to be noted. It also serves a dou- 
ble function, subjective and objective. For some 
time after birth it is not differentiated from the 
other physical senses, but at about the age of three 
months begins to serve as a help in distinguishing 
food and soon after to contribute materially to the 
sensuous pleasures of the child. With taste, it 
stands a watchful guardian to protect the system 
from injurious foods. It also adds much to the 
relish of many dishes by mingling the enjoyment 
of their aroma with that of their flavor. The 
grateful feeling throughout the whole body ac- 
companying slight changes in temperature serves 
well as an introduction to the higher physical 
pleasures that fragrant odors produce. Poets sing 
of the delights of the bath and of the gentle 
zephyrs that lull to restful sleep, but their lyres 
assume a lighter, quicker movement as they de- 
scribe the odors of the 

" May-flowers blooming around them ; 
Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful 

sweetness." 
18 



THE SENSES.— SMELL. 19 

For the physical well-being alone, the organ 
of smell needs that same careful attention that 
any other sense organ demands. Its structure is 
easily understood by reference to any work on 
anatomy or phA'siology. The delicacy of the 
Schneiderian membrane, on which are spread out 
the fine filaments of the olfactory nerve and 
against which the odorous particles must pass, is, 
however, not so generally appreciated as it ought 
to be. The turbinated chambers are kept pliable 
and sensitive by a regular supply of moisture 
whose slight variation affects at once both the 
ability to distinguish odors and the health of the 
organ. Probably no other organ so quickly re- 
veals a great variety of bodily disorders. It serves 
as a distress flag, giving notice of internal derange- 
ment. It is liable to painful diseases of its own, 
such as catarrh, polypi, adenoidal growths, etc. 
Most of them are more incident to childhood than 
to manhood, and unless promptly detected and 
suppressed become the generators of a whole brood 
of ills that make life miserable for one's com- 
panions as well as for himself. Sometimes the 
trouble originates in one duct, sometimes in both. 
It frequently happens that the sense of smell in a 
child is practically destroyed, and that an offensive 
disease has fastened itself upon him before the 
parents know that anything is wrong. jSTo child 
ever has a cold, or a fever, or frontal inflamma- 
tions of any character, that may not settle in that 
tender network of bone and nerves at the base of 
the nose. Skin eruptions are likely to find a home 
there also. Occasionally some insect or some hard 



20 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

substance lodges in one of the canals and endan- 
gers even the life of the child. The only safe 
course with children is to be constantly on the 
lookout for disorders. Sympathetic intimacy with 
them will usually bring them to you on the slight- 
est disturbance in this or in any other organ, and 
their appeal should have instant and intelligent 
response. The derangement may not seem serious 
and it may be but temporary. If it be serious, 
however, or if it does not appear serious and yet 
is persistent, medical assistance should be sought. 
Often these nasal affections are manifestations of 
systemic disturbances, but, whether one or the 
other, remedies can not too quickly be applied. 

Two seemingly parallel straight lines may he hut 
an inch apart at their origin and yet he ten feet apart 
at the end of a mile, and a nasal disorder that 
appears very slight in the child may in manhood he 
rohhing life of all its pleasure. 

This little volume would grow to undue pro- 
portions if space should be taken to describe the 
diseases to which the different sense organs are 
subject, together with their symptoms and reme- 
dies, and yet the object would not be attained if 
simple methods of discovering the affections were 
not presented. The closing of one nostril by ex- 
ternal pressure with the finger and the child's 
effort to force air through the other as he expels 
it from the lungs readily reveals obstructions and 
frequently removes them. The inability of the 
child to breathe through his nostrils, which is the 
way Nature intended, is always cause for atten- 
tion, though in case of colds not necessarily for 



THE SENSES.— SMELL. 21 

uneasiness. If a child of six or seven has no cold, 
and 3'et can not distinguish the odors of flowers, 
perfumes, kinds of fruit, etc., the cause of it should 
be ascertained as soon as possible and its removal 
intelligently attempted. Very simple remedies may 
prove effectual at once. Possibly the development 
of this sense is a little belated and the presentation 
of a few strikingly different odors may at once 
arouse and stimulate it. If the child complains 
of dull pains or of pressure between the eyes for a 
week or two, it is a sure sign of incipient catarrh, 
or of a kindred disease, and needs skillful treat- 
ment. 

To the general feeling of well-being, when the 
other senses already mentioned are responding nat- 
urally, the sense of temperature may possibly add 
the slightest glimmer of the sesthetic element, but 
it comes into grateful prominence with the growth 
of the sense of smell. In addition to its utility as 
a factor in determining the nature of food, smell 
also proves of great value in an intellectual and 
practical way. It assists in getting knowledge of a 
thousand things in the world round about us. The 
botanist is dependent upon it for distinguishing 
many varieties of plants; the mineralogist would 
be sorely handicapped in classifying minerals if his 
sense of smell were to fail him; the biologist with- 
out a good nose would be almost as bad as a miner 
without a lantern; the chemist would be in greater 
confusion than Pandora, when she opened her 
famous box, if he were unable to discover the odor 
of the various compounds in his laboratory. What 
is true of the sciences is also as true of the arts. 



22 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Many diseases are revealed to the physician large- 
ly by their odor. The plumber and gasfitter would 
not earn his salt who could not discover the pres- 
ence of deleterious or poisonous gases by their 
peculiar odor. Without this sense the cook could 
hardly know that a stew is burning, a sauce is fer- 
menting, an egg is addled, or that a dish will 
prove relishable at the table. Without this sense 
one would succeed poorly in handling drugs, per- 
fumery, groceries, farm products of all kinds, etc. 
Without it what would become of 

" The butcher and the baker 
And the candlestick maker?" 

Properly trained, it is a good insurance against 
fire, for it often reveals the presence of fire in the 
house long before any other sense discovers it. 

The sense of smell as an assthetic sense has 
already been mentioned. It has always been 
prized, even among barbarous nations, for its 
pleasure-producing capacities; the sweet-smelling 
unguent and the musk-scented ointment are as 
popular among the wild men of Borneo as among 
the dilettante of the salons of Paris. Fragrant 
odors vied with the cithara and the harp in the 
entertainments at the royal palaces of Egypt, of 
Assyria, of Phoenicia, of Greece, and of Kome. As 
guests entered, the glad welcome of sweet music 
was even excelled by the sweeter perfumes, whose 
fragrance filled the ambient air; the rich tapes- 
tries, the multicolored rugs, the luxurious couches 
exhaled the attar of roses, the aroma of myrrh and 
of the pomegranate; while fine spray, laden v/ith 



THE SENSES.— SMELL. 23 

lavender, fell in floating mists over the fair com- 
pany as they passed around and among the rare 
plants that added their wealth of beauty to the 
splendor of the scene. Gentle ladies through all 
the ages have sought the choicest waters and per- 
fumes for their toilets, and they are now regarded 
as necessaries in the boudoir of every cultivated 
woman, whether Christian or pagan. But how- 
ever successfully art may bring captive these rare 
extracts from Natvire's rarest laboratories, the per- 
fumed air of springtime, of summer, and of au- 
tumn gray, freighted with the blushes of opening 
flowers, with the rustle of nodding grain, and 
the aroma of the mellowing fruit, awakens har- 
monies and images of subtler beauty and deeper 
meaning. 

But much of this is known to everybody, and 
it finds a place here simply to emphasize more 
fully the importance of the care and culture of 
the sense of smell. The noseless man knows less 
by far than many people imagine. Into whatever 
walk or occupation in life a child is to go, he will 
need for his physical well-being, for his general 
knowledge, for his jesthetic enjoyment, for his 
practical use, a sensitive, delicately discriminating 
sense of smell. The health of the organ is the 
first requisite, but that is important only as en- 
abling it to profit by training and to attain unto 
the highest possible perfection. Ths means at 
hand are so various and so abundant that further 
suggestions will be withheld until the chapter on 
general methods of cultivating the senses is 
reached. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — TOUCH. 

The child enters the world furnished with 
all the instruments necessary for becoming ac- 
quainted with it, for protecting itself against it, 
and for finally becoming its master. Nature 
kindly anticipated the coming by providing the 
child with a more or less perfect covering, so that 
the shock of transition shall not be too great. In 
spite of this fact, it frequently happens that even 
a slight change of temperature or the contact with 
its clothing, though ever so soft, produces great 
pain. What effect the manner of handling the 
child in these first few hours or days has upon its 
future life, the Infinite only knows; but that it 
has a right to intelligent, sympathetic care, none 
but a brute denies. Nature still remains its friend, 
and slowly hardens the epidermal cells, so that 
soon the extreme sensitiveness is gone and the 
child rests quietly in its crib. The delicate termi- 
nal nerve filaments that at first were easily set on 
fire are covered a little more fully, and all over 
the body companion filaments begin to respond 
in an orderly, pleasurable way to outside pres- 
sure. 

Through the sensations thus aroused the child 
24 



THE SENSES.— TOUCH. 25 

soon begins an acquaintance with the external 
world and succeeds in localizing, or placing, at 
least in a general way, the objects touching it. 
What a wonderful thousand-direction sense is this 
sense of touch! As the babe lies in the cradle, 
nothing can come in contact with it on back or 
front, on hand or foot, above or below, right or 
left, but that the news is instantly carried to the 
brain. If the object be rough or sharp, irritation 
results; if it be soft or smooth, gratification. 

The sense of touch increases in sensitiveness 
and delicacy much more rapidly in some parts of 
the body than in others. If two toothpicks, or 
pencils, or a pair of dividers be separated slightly 
at the points and lightly pressed against the 
cheek of a child, he will probably declare that 
there is but one point touching him, but if applied 
to the lips, tip of the tongue, or finger, he will 
immediately say there are two. If now the dis- 
tance between the points be increased and applied 
again to the cheek, he may detect two points, but 
on being applied to the neck, only one. The thigh 
is found to possess less power of discrimination 
than any other part of the body; the fingers and 
the tongue tip the greatest. This difference in 
discrimination is due to the difference in the dis- 
tances between the various nerve endings of the 
sense of touch. One great peculiarity about them 
is that they seem to multiply with use. There are 
also differences in what is called the threshold value 
of touch — that is, the degree of pressure required 
to awaken sensation. This also varies in different 
parts of the body and in different persons. 



26 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

The offices of this sense in the physical econ- 
omy are easily seen to be various. It is essential 
to the protection of all parts of the body against 
injury, and, like the sense of temperature, is more 
sensitive in parts that are most susceptible to 
harm. It immediately reveals the presence of in- 
sects and vermin of every description; of objects 
in the way or coming against it, whether sharp 
or dull, rough or smooth, hard or soft; and of too 
great pressure or constriction of any part of the 
clothing. Through association, it indirectly re- 
veals much concerning such objects that is not 
given by pressure proper. What miserable crea- 
tures we should be if compelled to wait for a fly 
to bite or a mosquito to fill his nib before know- 
ing of his presence. Think of the suffering which 
would everywhere ensue if we could know nothing 
of a rough substance until continual rubbing 
against it had produced rawness or inflammation 
of the skin. The sense of touch is the special 
guardian of the eye. Whenever it fails in its duty 
there, intense suffering may result. It also pre- 
vents the ears and mouth and nose from many a 
sad mishap. Contact with the tongue often reveals 
the nature of food by association before the sense 
of taste has been aroused, and, so together with 
smell, touch assists taste to discriminate among 
foods and to protect the system against offensive 
or poisonous substances. 

This passive touch is greatly re-enforced and 
multiplied by the addition of muscular movements 
and their associated sensations. It is then called 
active touch, because the voluntary muscles are 



THE SENSES,— TOUCH. 27 

exercised in bringing any part of the body desired 
into contact with an object. As an illustration, 
the arm may be thrown around a column, the feet 
run over a ball, the fingers clasped around an ink 
bottle, the hand slipped rapidly over a book, and 
in each case the varying pressure, combined with 
the different muscular sensations, reveals the shape 
and surface of the object. It is now conceded that 
the idea of solidity itself, the idea of three dimen- 
sions — length, breadth, and thickness — is derived 
through active touch. Without it, every object 
would appear flat and no adequate conception of 
the positions of objects in space could be attained. 
This co-operation of the muscles gives the touch a 
sufficient number of simultaneous or of rapidly 
successive sensations to enable the mind to deter- 
mine the shape, size, surface, texture, and hardness 
of an object. Much skill in discriminating, as 
with the other senses, develops slowly and develops 
with practice only. The time comes, however, 
when the amount of muscular movement required 
is very slight in any given case and by a process 
of association and symbolism, to be explained later, 
the mind instantly recognizes the characteristics 
named. The distance from one part of an object 
to another is revealed by the observed amount of 
muscular effort required to move the hand or part 
of the hand from one to the other. The distance 
between objects is determined in the same way, 
though other muscles may be used and other parts 
of the body, or the whole body, moved, as in the 
case of walking or jumping. 

Though afterward, by association and symbol- 



28 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ism, this special function of touch is largely as- 
sumed by sight, the accuracy of sight perception 
as well as of the information still furnished us by 
touch, is entirely dependent upon the way in which 
the sense of touch is educated in the child. This 
sense is sometimes defective or belated, and what 
is often ascribed to the dullness of the child's in- 
tellect or to inattention and indifference is found 
upon investigation to be due to one of the causes 
named. The test can easily be made by placing 
in the child's hand a variety of forms, surfaces, 
and textures for him to compare. He should not 
be tested on his ability to designate by the proper 
terms, for that tests his memory and not his phys- 
ical sense, but upon his ability to pick out two or 
more things of similar shape, surface, or texture; in 
a similar way, by touch only, also to tell relative 
sizes of objects. If he be found lacking, the divider 
and pressure tests may also be used. It is highly 
probable that few cases Avill be found where daily 
exercises in discriminating by touch will not in a 
reasonable time show surprisingly happy results. 
Mere guesses should not be allowed. Accuracy, 
then rapidity, must be the constant aim. If, after 
a few weeks, no appreciable progress is discover- 
able, a physician should make an examination and 
advise upon the course to be pursued. The cause 
may not lie in the peripheral nor in the afferent 
nerves, but in the brain, and the sooner knowoi the 
better. Possibly methods of educating the sense 
have been wrong; possibly general nervous de- 
rangement frustrates the efforts; possibly in some 
way the child's mind has not yet learned how to 



THE SENSES.— TOUCH. 29 

treat the sensations that are constantly pouring 
into his little soul, and some gentle means must be 
used to make that connection between mind and 
body which, in some way, failed at the critical mo- 
ment when Kature intended it should be made. 

The intellectual value of touch, the power to 
give us knowledge of the external world, is seldom 
placed high enough. Without the sense of touch 
the child would not only see things flat, but the 
myriad forms that fill the earth and sky would 
never be known to him. All of them would be 
alike to him — neither rough nor smooth, fine nor 
coarse, sharp nor blunt, round nor square, far nor 
near, in high nor low relief. In fact, he would 
have no idea in the concrete or in the abstract of 
any such qualities. He would, in manhood, be 
tumbling downstairs, over chairs, into the fire- 
place, into the washtub, and everywhere else, just 
as he does in childhood before this sense has taught 
him the relief and relations of objects. Without 
it he would know neither sea nor land, wood nor 
mineral. If man were deprived of the sense of 
touch, every loom, every ship, every railway car, 
every industry in which man is engaged, would 
instantly stop. All these are dependent upon its 
high cultivation for their successful conduct. No 
matter for what occupation a child is intended, 
the education of this sense is of vital importance. 
Whether he becomes a blacksmith or a farmer, 
he will discover not only its everyday use, but its 
value in buying his food and clothing and the 
furnishings for his house. In selling his wool or 
buying sheep, the woolgrower will find his profits 



30 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

largely in his skill in detecting the value of both 
by feeling. The sense of touch discovers many de- 
fects which escape the best of eyes. If he becomes 
a weaver, a watchman, a dealer in fine fabrics, a 
surgeon, an oculist, a dentist, a musician, an 
artist, a bank cashier, the possession of delicate 
and finely discriminating touch is absolutely es- 
sential. It must ever be remembered that child- 
hood is the only time when the resources of this 
sense can be profitably developed. Fair efficiency 
may be secured by beginning later in life, but rare 
power is seldom attained. Some children inherit 
great delicacy of touch, but whatever Nature sup- 
plies them may be multiplied manifold by intelli- 
gent cultivation. 

The extent to which touch is cultivated in 
some of the schools for defectives is shown in the 
skill with which the blind and deaf read raised 
letters in English and German. Superintendent 
Hammond states that Helen Kellar gets the 
thought of a friend by placing her fingers on his 
lips and her thumb on his throat as he speaks ! 
At the World's Fair she visited the art gallery, 
and after passing her hand over the head and face 
of several pieces of statuary, said of one, "This 
face feels sad." It was the statue of Melancholy! 
She seems to have " brain cells in her finger tips." 



CHAPTEE VI. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — HEAPJNG. 

" Sweet is every sound, 
The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
The murmuring of innumerable bees." 

The sense of hearing is the next in the order 
of Nature's wise and beneficent provisions for 
the child. All the senses thus far described are 
contact senses, but this one gives us information 
about objects far and near. Without it all exist- 
ence would be as still as the chamber of death. 
Man's knowledge and man's pleasure would be cur- 
tailed bej'ond measure, while his progress in self- 
development would be exceedingly slow and diffi- 
cult. The embarrassment which deafness in one 
ear produces is sad enough, but when both are 
bereft of the power to hear, much of life has gone 
out. 

Authorities differ as to the stage of develop- 
ment of the ear at the time of the birth of the 
child, though the explanation is probably found 
in the fact that it varies in different children. 
In some, sounds are apparently appreciated al- 
most immediately, while in others several hours 
or even days elapse before any kind of sound 
affects the child. A friend tells me that on the 

31 



32 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

morning after her babe was born it was fright- 
ened almost into convulsions by the explosion of 
a cannon firecracker near her window. Preyer 
says that his little son was surely deaf until the 
fourth day. Compayre reminds us that auditory 
sensibility wisely develops slowly: " By hearing 
too soon the child would run the risk of not hear- 
ing for the rest of his life. Too strong a vibra- 
tion breaks the string of a harp or of a violin; so 
sounds too intense, if felt, would bruise or injure 
an organ so delicate and unexercised. N"ature, 
then, has judiciously protected the child against 
the shock of too numerous or too violent sensa- 
tions in leaving him dull of hearing for a few 
weeks." All this being true, it again emphasizes 
the necessity for intelligent, loving care during 
the very first weeks of the child's life. An old- 
time philosopher woke his children up every morn- 
ing with sweet strains from his violin, lest a too 
violent shock might jar and disturb the harmony 
of the transition from sleep to wakefulness. What 
hushed and soothing adagios ought to awaken this 
babe and introduce him into the wonderful life he 
now enters ! 

If you are familiar with the internal structure 
of the ear, all of the above is easily understood. 
You can readily see that the delicate tympanic 
membrane at the base of the external auditory 
canal could not only be easily injured or broken 
by any sharp or loud noise, but by almost any kind 
of quick concussion which would force the air 
into the ear. It does not take much of a jar to 
disarrange the finely balanced machinery of the 



THE SENSES.— HEARING. 33 

middle or of the internal ear, and no care should 
be considered too great for its protection. Chil- 
dren's diseases are just as likely to settle in a weak 
spot as the diseases of adults, and for this reason 
any slight disorder in the ear may soon become 
serious. From various causes, these just men- 
tioned being among them, authorities estimate 
that from fifty to sixty per cent of the children 
are more or less defective in hearing. It is also 
claimed that by judicious treatment the percentage 
can be reduced to fifteen or twenty. The advan- 
tage of a better acquaintance with this important 
sense organ is thus further emphasized. 

The diseases in and about children's ears often 
become chronic very early in life and in many 
families are a source of constant concern. Ordi- 
nary earache easily runs off into stabbing, stick- 
ing pains, producing delirium, and leaving sore- 
ness and tenderness in the whole side of the head 
for days after. It is hardly possible to conceive a 
more excruciating pain than that which frequently 
accompanies discharges from the ear in scrofulous 
children or in children who are recovering from 
scarlatina, measles, smallpox, etc. Some children 
seldom take a cold without inflammation of the 
ear at once following. Often the trouble is in the 
swelling and partial closing of the Eustachian tube, 
or in the lodgment of an insect or of some hard 
substance, or the accumulation of wax in the outer 
canal, or in some affection of the mastoid bone 
just above and behind the ear. But whatever or 
wherever it is,* it demands skillful and sympathetic 
treatment. Usually danger gives notification in 



34 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

slight deafness, in tingling sensations, in whistling 
noises, and in characteristic buzzing and roaring 
sounds hours or even days before severe pains force 
attention. That which seems trifling at first may 
become chronic and ineradicable in a fortnight, 
hence the need for early attention to such symp- 
toms. Every mother and every teacher ought to 
be acquainted with simple remedies to apply, but 
when these fail an aurist or a physician should be 
consulted without delay. 

In intellectual value the sense of hearing ranks 
next to that of sight, though touch might possibly 
Avith reason contend for the second place. It gives 
us the three great characteristics of sound — pitch, 
intensity, and quality or timhre — and also direc- 
tion and distance by association and symbolism. 
Distance is approximately determined by the in- 
tensity or volume of the sound as compared with 
what we happen to know of it when near by, com- 
bined with changes in timbre, which experience 
has taught us distance makes. So expert do travel- 
ers and hunters become in estimating distance by 
sound that it serves them almost as well as the eye. 
The temperature and humidity of the air, to- 
gether with its degree of homogeneousness, affect 
all such estimates. Direction is discovered by the 
relative intensity of the sound upon the two ears, 
the short distance between them, combined with 
the difference produced by their different rela- 
tions to the line of the advancing sound waves, 
being sufficient to enable very young children to 
discriminate without much difficulty. If inability 
to do this with reasonable certainty is discovered 



THE SENSES.— HEARING. 85 

in children of school age, it is sufficient cause for 
further inquiry. 

All normal ears easily recognize pitch in a 
general way, though ability to distinguish clearly 
the various tones of the diatonic scale comes with 
education. Every child that can not readily dis- 
tinguish high from low tones is defective, and if 
reasonable effort fails to develop this power, it is 
evidence of some organic defect that needs pro- 
fessional treatment. The proper test is simply to 
produce sounds, first of marked difference in 
pitch, as 1, 5, 8 of the scale ; then of less difference, 
as 1, 3, 5, 8; then the whole scale; then minor 
divisions — sharps and flats. The voice or any 
musical instrument may be used. It will some- 
times be found that a child can distinguish pitch 
in a piano or an organ, and not do it in vocal 
tones, or in the latter and not in the former; and 
yet, after a little practice, the inability may dis- 
appear. Where the physical ability is small, the 
intellectual may come in to re-enforce it, and per- 
ception thus be easily exercised. On the other 
hand, the former may be great and the latter so 
weak that fine discrimination is impossible. Every 
test made should keep these two elements con- 
stantly in mind. Much time is wasted in music 
and reading in attempts to force pupils to recog- 
nize pitch without having given them any proper 
training for developing ability to do it. There is 
just the same necessity for a well-graded series of 
exercises through a course of years for the cultiva- 
tion of the physical side of pitch perception as for 
the education of the muscles in writing or draw- 



36 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ing. It might as well be understood, once for all, 
that skill in perception is attained only by intelli- 
gent exercise of the sense organs, and that every 
attempt to get along without it must result in utter 
failure. The organization of apperceptive organs 
on the mental side is impossible without corre- 
sponding organization in the sensory ganglia. 
Differences in pitch can no more be recognized, 
except through corresponding nerve power in the 
auditory apparatus, than can the different tones 
be produced without properly trained vocal cords. 
The self can react to interpret sounds through the 
sensation only, and its multiplicity of shades is the 
result of education. 

To read well, talk well, sing well, play on any 
musical instrument, or to enjoy vocal expression 
or instrumental music of any kind requires a nice 
appreciation of the varying shades of pitch. 
Childhood is the best time for its cultivation, 
though its growth should be directed and not un- 
duly hastened. The child has plenty of time. 
The rarest powers, as well as the rarest fruit, prefer 
to take their own time for ripening. The range 
of pitch perception should be constantly extend- 
ing, while the fine shades of distinction are being 
attained. 

Tones are also distinguished by their quality 
or timbre. By quality is meant that characteris- 
tic which enables us to distinguish among tones of 
the same pitch and intensity; to recognize their 
source as of a bird or of an organ, or of the human 
voice, and the particular emotions they express. 
Quality is due to the nature and number of over- 



THE SENSES— HEARING. 37 

tones accompanying the fundamental or pitch 
tone. If a violin string be loosely made, the tone, 
whatever the pitch, will be more or less diffuse 
and rough; if it be compactly formed, the tone 
will have corresponding compactness and smooth- 
ness; so of a bell, solid or porous. This accounts 
for the dilference in the quality of the voice as the 
vocal cords are iniiamed or in the natural condi- 
tion. Ears that hear at all usually appreciate 
emphatic differences in quality. The test is easily 
made by discovering whether a child can distin- 
guish among voices of different persons, different 
forms of the same voice, vocal utterances of dif- 
ferent animals, or the tones of different musical 
instruments, noises, etc. Surprising results will 
often show themselves in these tests. Where in- 
ability to make the general discriminations exists, 
the causes may be any of those already stated, and 
similar treatment should be used. Where children 
are to be handled in classes, those more ready in 
noting quality can afford to wait a little until the 
others approximate them in skill, though this sug- 
gestion should not be followed too rigidly. 

Intensity, or volume, is the force or momentum 
of a sound and is dependent upon the swing or am- 
plitude of the waves producing it. Ears that read- 
ily appreciate the other characteristics mentioned 
may still be unable to distinguish this one, at least 
with any degree of fineness. " ff " and " pp " 
mean about the same to them. Use same pitch, or 
same quality, with similar means, as suggested in 
preceding paragraphs, increasing and decreasing 
intensity, to discover effect upon the child. For, 



38 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

of course, effect on the child is the measure of the 
child's ability. Often sounds of great volume will 
produce intense pain. A child of mine could not 
be persuaded to stay near a brass band while it was 
playing because it gave her a severe earache. The 
ringing of a church bell drove a neighbor's child 
almost into convulsions. The curfew whistle is 
blowing as I write, and my dog falls prostrate as 
usual and begins a pitiful whine. All these and 
scores of other facts of a kindred nature will be 
discovered in testing hearing. It would be a feel- 
ingless and resourceless teacher or parent, indeed, 
who could not easily find ways of protecting and 
helping these sensitive children. A moment's 
thought would reverse the order now followed in 
many families. 

The sesthetic value of the sense of hearing is 
too well known to need any elaboration. The art 
as well as the science of music is dependent en- 
tirely upon the ability of the ear to receive and 
transmit sounds of infinite variety in pitch and 
quality and intensity. As the rarest and noblest 
aspirations of the soul find expression in song, 
they are also awakened by song as it is received 
and interpreted by the refined sense of hearing. 
Among the fine arts, music is the first to minister 
to the child. The rhythm of the nurse's gentle 
lullaby quiets it almost the first hour after birth, 
and the sweet melodies of its early years soothe a 
thousand sorrows and transport it from many a 
turbulent passion to peaceful sleep — 

Where dreams are songs, 
And trundle-beds are fairies' chariots. 



THE SENSES.— HEARING. 39 

As music serves to express tlie emotions of 
youth and manhood, it rises in dignity and state- 
liness, finding its highest mission in voicing the 
longings of the human soul for the Infinite. By 
virtue of this intimate relationship to the finer 
sentiments, its ethical value can hardly be over- 
estimated. A man with a cultivated ear has poor 
excuse for being immoral. 

The value of this sense in a practical way is 
easily enough seen, but teachers and parents are 
often slow in understanding what its loss means to 
a child who is suffering from some affection which 
may injure or destroy it permanently. This chap- 
ter has already urged immediate attention to such 
cases, and they are mentioned again, with the hope 
that some poor child may be profited thereby. 

Two seemingly parallel straight lines may he hut 
an inch apart at their origin and yet he ten feet apart 
at the end of a mile. Some children are thirty years 
in growing deaf, some twenty, some ten, some five, 
some one! 

There are too many partially deaf people in 
every community. Every such one is badly handi- 
capped in his business and social relations. How 
many men lose good positions because of defective 
hearing! How many sad and fatal accidents are 
due to the same cause! The new education can 
do no better service to the oncoming generations 
than to preserve and perfect this sense in the chil- 
dren. 

The clear understanding of language is de- 
pendent upon ability to hear well. Often the 
deepest meaning and the finest shades of thought 



40 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

are lost because an accent, a subvocal, or a little 
slur of the voice escapes notice. A child is thought 
dull or stupid who could not be otherwise, for he 
seldom hears anything that is said at home or in 
the schoolroom. I visited a classroom not long 
since, and found that pupils in the rear were cran- 
ing their necks to see the diagrams on the board 
and hear the explanations given. Some soon gave 
up in despair and settled down in a listless way to 
await the end of the recitation. Inquiry developed 
the fact that nearly one third of them heard little 
of any recitation. Under such conditions what 
could be expected of them? A superintendent in 
a small city reports that he found forty pupils in 
his schools who were occupying rear forms and 
who could hear little said by teacher or pupils at 
the front. 

Various general tests have been suggested, the 
watch test being frequently named, but the human 
voice is the best for the home and the classroom. 
It is that which it is important the children should 
hear. Let it be of the usual tone, and let chil- 
dren who hear it with difficulty be given seats near 
the teacher, the others ranging back in the order 
of ability to hear. Sight and the sense of tempera- 
ture must also control in the assignment of seats, 
as suggested in discussing them. In the home, 
the place at the fireside and at the table, where 
most of the talk can easily be heard, should always 
be given to the child whose hearing is less acute 
than that of the others. If proper care is observed, 
such cases rapidly improve with opportunity and 
exercise, and the defect usually entirely disappears. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — SIGHT. 

We are now to study the king of all the senses 
— the sense of sight. It, like sound, is not a con- 
tact sense. Eays of light are transmitted through 
space by an intangible medium called ether. So 
faithfully does it do its duty that the eye is thus 
permitted to see objects lying hundreds of millions 
of miles awa}'', a distance so great that no one can 
form any adequate conception of it. While the 
telephone transmits the human voice so that it can 
be heard a thousand miles away, the telescope ex- 
tends the power of the eye so that a vast multitude 
of heavenly bodies are brought to view which 
otherwise would not have been known to exist. 
The wonderful resources of this sense and its vital 
importance in every moment of our waking hours 
give it the high place above assigned. 

In structure its mechanism is not so difficult to 
understand as that of the ear, though the rods 
and cones underneath the retina perplex the stu- 
dent somewhat. At birth the eyes of some chil- 
dren are more fully developed than those of oth- 
ers, though it is probable that none of them at first 
have more than the faintest sensation of light. 
In a few days they begin to notice anv bright light, 

'41 



42 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

as that of a lamp, but the most painstaking inves- 
tigators incline to the belief that there is very little 
discrimination among objects for a fortnight, and 
then only among those of bright colors. 

Compayre reminds us that the child at first 
sees only in front of him and that he does not see 
objects to the right or left. This can be shown 
easily by _ shifting a light or a bright-colored ob- 
ject either way in front of him. He soon loses it 
and gazes vacantly into space. The same authority 
also cites the fact that all young children are my- 
opic, seeing objects only at short range. The first 
is due to the fact that the child has not yet learned 
the art of moving its eyes so as to change the 
field of vision; the second to the fact that the eye 
is not yet completely developed and that the power 
of focal adjustment has not yet been attained. 
Experiments of this nature during the first four 
or five months of a child's life will reveal some 
very interesting things about the growth of sight 
perception, among them the surprising fact that 
nearly all children are cross-eyed at birth and some 
of them for many months after. The co-ordina- 
tion of the movements of the muscles controlling 
the eyeballs is necessary before rapid progress can 
be made in distinguishing objects by sight; this is 
often not fully attained before the age of four or 
five. 

The intellectual value of this sense needs no 
particular discussion here. So much of our knowl- 
edge comes through it that the value of the other 
senses is often overlooked. If one sees a thing, 
he is supposed to know all about it. Seeing has 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 43 

become the s}Tionym for understanding, and when 
we have explained a matter to any one we quickly 
ask, "Do you see it?" The direct knowledge 
given us by the eye is of hue, tint, and intensity. 
By hue is meant the more or less positively defined 
colors; by tint, the varying shades due simply to 
the small quantity of a color or hue showing itself 
in a mixture or background of white or some lead- 
ing color; by intensity, the amount of light re- 
ceived from an object by the eye. The first is de- 
pendent upon the relative rapidity of the wave 
movements, red being the lowest and violet the 
highest; the second and third are already suffi- 
ciently explained. By the infinite number of com- 
binations of these three, the perception of the ex- 
ternal world is made so definite that no two human 
beings out of the billion and a half now living 
appear exactly alike to the cultivated eye; no two 
of the endless quintillions of leaves that cover the 
earth are found to agree in every detail. Every- 
where is variety; the bright and the somber, the 
red and the gold, the light and the dark, the green 
and the yellow, the blue and the crimson, the glow 
of the evening sunset, the dancing of the silver- 
tipped waves, the wild sprangles of the restless 
lightning, are ever revealing through the eye the 
nature and the resources of the universe of matter 
and of force. 

The purely visual function of the eye is greatly 
multiplied and extended by its union with the 
muscular movements of the body, the neck, and 
the eyeballs, as already intimated. By the aid of 
the first two the whole range of the horizon. 



44 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

around and above, can be swept almost in an 
instant, and objects distinguished and located with 
surprising accuracy. At first consciously, then 
more or less unconsciously, the muscular sensations 
serve as a measure of the angles passed over in 
the movement and the visual sensation is the only 
one prominent in the perception. But when the 
eyeballs of children of school age or of adults are 
observed, they will be seen to be as restless as 
globules of mercury, turning hither and thither 
and everywhere on the slightest occasion. Few of 
these movements are purposeless. They are made 
so as to take in the whole of an object and its 
surroundings; they are repeated and reversed 
again and again, that each detail of color and tint 
and shade and form and relation may be verified. 
These muscular sensations also merge in conscious- 
ness with the purely visual, and the knowledge de- 
rived is usually attributed to the latter. Then 
there are two sets of delicate ciliary muscles inside 
the eyeball itself; one adjusts the size of the pupil 
so that the proper amount of light may be ad- 
mitted to the internal eye, the other adjusts the 
lenses of the eye in looking at objects at vary- 
ing distances, so as to focus the rays coming from 
them upon the retina. Though the movements 
of these internal muscles are so slight, they evi- 
dently enter into conscious sensation fully enough 
to assist eye-perception in determining the shape, 
distance, and size of objects. 

The dependence of sight upon touch has al- 
ready been mentioned. At first all objects seem 
flat to the child, and right up against him, as it 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 45 

were. Exercising a natin-al impulse to touch them, 
he puts out his hand and finds that they are a little 
distance from him, or even beyond his reach. 
Through a long course of experimenting, he learns 
to measure in a rough way the distance to any ob- 
ject by the amount of muscular effort necessary 
to reach it. In like manner also he gets an idea 
of its form and size, including its depth as well 
as its height and breadth. The eye follows all 
these movements, and the associated visual and 
muscular sensations of the eye proper become so 
assimilated with them that on their recurrence, 
without touch, they serve to symbolize the touch 
sensations, and thus give knowledge which touch 
alone had been supplying. So by this wonderful 
principle of symbolism the eye gradually usurps 
this function of touch, and tells us whether objects 
are rough or smooth, liquid or solid, fibrous or 
crystalline, round or elliptical, oblong or square, 
fiat or in relief, sharp or dull, large or small, fixed 
or m-oving, far or near; and all of this by the mi- 
nute differences seen in the shades and colors of 
the various parts of a body or of different bodies. 
Thus it not only enhances the value of touch, but 
makes itself almost a universal sense, for this prin- 
ciple of symbolism enables it to act in place of 
other senses also, as explained in Chapter II. 

The aesthetic value of the senses also reaches 
its climax in the sense of sight. Bright colors 
awaken interest and pleasure in a very young 
child. Their combinations in almost any fantastic 
way gratify and delight him. With the develop- 
ment of his intellectual nature the feeling of har- 



46 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

mony is aroused only as certain colors are associ- 
ated, and, later, assthetic taste finds satisfaction 
in tints and colors of the rarer hue. 

Even in the most cultivated minds Nature and 
art never cease to kindle the emotion of beauty 
through color and shade alone. But the percep- 
tion of form, as touch drops out, also awakens the 
emotion of the beautiful. Order, proportion, sym- 
metry, and grace in form appeal to the finer and 
less sensuous elements of our nature more easily 
than does color. Form itself serves to purify and 
spiritualize the esthetic feelings. Certain classes 
of movements, particularly those of animals, pos- 
sibly due to the concrete forms they suggest, beget 
similar emotions. When color and form and move- 
ment are harmoniously combined, the most pleas- 
urable effects are produced. 

A liberal education and a successful life are 
so clearly dependent upon the perfection and skill 
in the use of the eyes that their care and training 
ought to constitute a large part of the responsibil- 
ity of every parent and teacher. It is a long dis- 
tance from that vacant, expressionless look of the 
newborn babe to that eye so full of meaning and 
understanding in the richly endowed man, and 
some intelligent hand must help to its attain- 
ment. The aid to give children with normal eyes 
is suggested in the next chapter. 

In certain families almost every child is trou- 
bled with some affection of the eye; in others, 
weak or diseased eyes are unknown. Heredity 
shows its trail in no other sense more clearly. 
Many of these diseases are of the eyelids, not af- 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 47 

fecting the eyeball at all^, and are merely tem- 
porary; others, though external, are very serious 
and gradually extend to the eyeball, even to the 
optic nerve. The surface of the eyeball is subject 
to diseases of a similar nature, sometimes originat- 
ing there and extending to the eyelids. All such 
disorders should be treated by physicians or by 
experienced nurses. The orders they give should 
be strictly followed, even though " there is no 
danger." Many eyes have been ruined by the 
carelessness or indifference of those whose love and 
interest ought to have taught them better. 

These disorders are easily seen, but those that 
directly aifect the sense of sight are usually dis- 
coverable only by closer examination. The ex- 
periments with the lighted candle or lamp for dis- 
covering the first sight sensations, range of field 
to right and left, distance at which objects are evi- 
dently lost to view, constitute a series which should 
be repeated at first from day to day, and then 
from week to week until such time as there seems 
to be but little change. The progress, rapid or 
slow, which the child makes in extending his 
range of vision by association with muscular move- 
ments and with touch should be most carefully 
noted. At times he will be found to have made 
great progress, and too much care can not be taken 
to discover the cause. Bright objects, as balls of 
colored yarn, may early be substitiited for the 
lighted candle, afterward varying those of softer 
colors with them. No attempt should he made to 
stimulate the eye to undue activity nor to test its 
endurance at any time, particularly with little chil- 



48 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

dren. The eyes of children are often injured 
greatly by gazing too long at a bright light. I 
remember, when past thirty, experimenting with 
an electric light to discover its power, and, though 
I was soon able to stare it out of countenance, I 
foimd, as the cars started off, that I was totally 
blind. Fortunately, the paralysis was temporary, 
but how much the contest has affected my sight 
since has always been a problem. A student of 
mine was blind for several days and suffered with 
weak eyes for years as a result of walking a mile 
at midday with the reflections of the bright sun- 
light from the snow crystals pouring into her face 
at every step. Heading from a brightly illuminated 
page has a similar effect. These experiences are 
so common and so well known that any one who 
endangers a child's eyes in such a way is little 
short of a criminal. 

Should these experiments with the babe reveal 
any peculiarity at any time, there ought to be no 
alarm. It sometimes happens that a child ap- 
pears to be making considerable progress for sev- 
eral days and then apparently loses all power 
gained. The cause may be interest in something 
else, or weariness, or a slight temporary weakness 
in the eyes. If the child is later in observing the 
light than other children, it may be the better 
for him, as earlier appreciation might do him 
harm. If, however, he pays no attention to it 
when ten days old, a physician's advice should be 
promptly sought, possibly even before that time 
if suspicions are aroused. Should the retrogres- 
sion above mentioned continue for a few days, or 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 49 

should no progress be making, the same ever-safe 
counselor should be called in. 

Not only' should objects of different colors be 
used, but also of different sizes and forms, espe- 
cially as the child is running around and getting 
acquainted with the outside world. Though, as 
stated, all small children are short-sighted to some 
extent, ability to adjust the eye to objects within 
reasonable range should be clearly showing itself 
as the child enters school. If parents do their 
duty, they will inform the teacher of any defects 
in vision. By noting the ease or difficulty with 
which the children read writing on the blackboard 
or the words in their books, teachers will at once 
discover reasons for further tests. The short- 
sighted children should be placed where they can 
see the work on the board, and they should be 
permitted to keep their eyes near the paper as 
they read or copy or figure. Weak eyes should not 
be confused with myopic eyes, for the former see 
with difficulty at any distance, while the latter 
see easily within their own range. The former 
need more light; the latter, a proper focus, which 
proper distance only can give, though suitable 
glasses will aid both. Among older children, long- 
sighted, hyperopic, eyes will occasionally be dis- 
covered. In serious cases of myopia or hyperopia, 
expert oculists should be consulted and proper 
glasses secured. The reason for consulting a spe- 
cialist is that the child shoiild not only have 
glasses that will enable him to see well, but that 
will also serve to gradually correct his defect. 
Where the cases are not very serious, the child 



50 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

should be seated in the schooh'oom as suggested, 
and permitted to liold his book or paper at the 
distance best adapted to his eyes. He should, 
however, be encouraged in a friendly way to move 
his book a little nearer the normal distance from 
time to time, in order to stimulate readjustment 
to the new focus. There should be no haste about 
this, for if the child has made appreciable prog- 
ress in correcting defects in four or five years it 
is cause for congratulation. It is probable that 
the increase in skill in apprehending words and 
objects will also relieve the embarrassment in my- 
opic and hyperopic children, as they soon learn 
to get along without such clear eye pictures as 
their more fortunate neighbors are accustomed to 
have. 

The most difficult cases to manage are those 
known as astigmatic, and those in which the foci 
of the two eyes are at unequal distances, thus con- 
fusing the image, particularly at certain ranges. 
There seems to be no remedy for these defects save 
in glasses properly fitted. It is quite common, and 
is a prolific source of headache. Thousands of 
cases of chronic headache have been promptly 
cured by the use of glasses. Though the astig- 
matism be very slight, the constant strain on the 
fine nerves and muscles of the internal eye pro- 
duces most acute pain in the head. This same 
effort in myopic and hyperopic cases produces the 
same result. A ministerial friend tells me that a 
teacher forced his son, who was afflicted with my- 
opia, to hold his book at the "regulation dis- 
tance '^ and in the regulation position as he read 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 51 

or studied, and that the headache resulting threw 
him into such nervous disorders that at least once 
a fortnight he was obliged to keep him out of 
school for three or four days. A lady friend tells 
me that her little daughter had been coming home 
every day for months with a bad headache, and 
that she was losing all interest in school, when 
the writer visited the city and urged the teachers 
to test the sight and hearing of their pupils. This 
girl was found defective in eyesight and given a 
front seat. In two weeks her headache was all 
gone, and her interest in school had returned. A 
multitude of similar cases might be given, but 
these must suffice. If this paragraph awakens its 
readers to a fuller understanding of the intimate 
connection between overstrained eyes and head- 
ache among children and adults, somebody will 
be remembered most kindly by them. 

For a little more definite test of the defects 
just named, Snellin's cards, bought of jewelers 
and dealers in spectacles nearly everywhere for ten 
cents, will be found serviceable. 

The fact has already been mentioned that the 
eyes of little children are often crossed more or 
less, and that the power to move both together 
may develop but slowly. It is important that 
nothing be done which will tend to cause a child 
to try to look in two directions at the same time. 
Slowly moving an object not too small, in various 
directions at some distance before him, carefully 
excluding anything from the right or left which 
might attract him, will encourage the two eyes to 
move together. This repeated from day to day 



52 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

will assist the child in co-ordinating the muscles 
and attaining the power to move them together. 
Very small objects should not be used, neither 
should anything be placed so near as to force the 
child to try to look over his nose. The disposi- 
tion to show a child off by having him look cross- 
eyed is vicious and criminal. 

Cataract is a well-known disease of the eye, 
but its early symptoms often escape notice, and 
sight is gone before any attempt is made to pre- 
serve it. At the first suggestion of a discoloration 
of the pupil, medical aid should be sought. 

Children are continually getting something in 
their eyes — a particle of dust, a cinder, a thorn — 
and everybody ought to know how to remove it. 
Put a toothpick above the eyelid and quickly re- 
verse the lid over it, thus usually exposing the for- 
eign substance. With a silk handkerchief gently 
remove the intruder. If the substance be imbed- 
ded in the eyeball, great care must be exercised lest 
permanent injury result to it. Only an expert 
should be permitted to handle this delicate organ 
if the case be serious. 

In the selection of text-books and reading 
matter generally for children, fine print and 
masses of letters and figures should be avoided. 
Eyes may be ruined in a fortnight by too close 
application to solid matter of this kind. In visit- 
ing a class recently, I found twenty boys, four- 
teen to seventeen years of age, complaining about 
weak eyes. Many of them had never thought of 
weak eyes before entering the class, but a month 
of study over fine print and compact columns had 



THE SENSES.— SIGHT. 53 

caused them incalculable distress. Good, clear 
type, well leaded, on white paper will prevent such 
trouble. Some blackboards are not fit for use. 
Half of the pupils do not write their work on the 
board so that it can be seen without strain. The 
light in many schoolrooms is very poor; often too 
much, often not enough; often from the right 
when it ought to be from the left. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SENSES (CONTINUED). — GENEEAL FUNCTIONS. 

We have now become somewhat acquainted 
with each of the senses, its specific nature, its par- 
ticular office or function, its value in an intellec- 
tual, aesthetic, and practical way, the diseases to 
which it is subject, the tests which may be ap- 
plied in discovering defects, and some of the meth- 
ods to be used in correcting them; we have also 
discovered the importance of all this informa- 
tion in the education of the child. It remains for 
us to inquire into the general functions of the 
senses, and to find their further relation to his 
physical and mental life. 

Whatever may be our theories regarding the 
exact nature of the mental power with which the 
child is endowed at birth, all agree that without 
some means of receiving communication from the 
material world outside the mind must lie dor- 
mant, no development resulting. The senses fur- 
nish this means of communication. Though we 
are ignorant of the nature of the connection be- 
tween the nerve cells of the brain and the mind, 
of the way in which certain kinds of nerve excita- 
tion are unerringly given practically the same 
meaning by one and all minds, we are not without 
54 



THE SENSES.— GENERAL FUNCTIONS. 55 

some definite knowledge of the way in which 
these external objects awaken brain activity. Each 
nerve filament has direct communication with the 
brain, so that we may regard the nervous organ- 
ism as a great telegraphic or telephonic system, 
Avith the brain as the receiving or central station. 
If a nerve filament capable of appreciating heat 
motion is excited by a warm body in contact, by 
concussion, by friction, or by chemical action, the 
excitation is carried on its own nerve line to the 
brain, and there entering consciousness is inter- 
preted as heat. In no other way can a child get 
knowledge of temperature. If a terminal filament 
capable of appreciating pressure be excited by 
some body coming against it, that peculiar kind 
of nerve excitement is also carried to the brain by 
its connecting line. In that way only can a child 
get knowledge of the presence of an external body 
and of the nature of its surface. In a similar way 
stimuli act, each in its own way, upon the various 
sensory nerve filaments, producing specific kinds 
of nerve excitation, thus making the child ac- 
quainted with the characteristics of the world of 
external objects. The fidelity with which this 
transmission is made determines, in great part, 
the extent and accuracy of the child's knowledge. 
If this delicate machinery is not in perfect order, 
not working with precision, confusion naturally 
results. 

As you are observing the children, you will 
see how rapidly they grow in power to distin- 
guish objects and to note their qualities. The 
more frequently a sense is excited within certain 



56 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

bounds, and with slightly varying stimuli, the 
more sensitive it becomes and the finer the dis- 
tinctions it presents to the mind. The physical 
senses as the media of communication between 
the mind and the external world serve their full 
purpose only as they are gaining in ability to 
appropriate and transmit an increasing number of 
shades of differences in color, in tone, in form, in 
intensit3^ The mind can proceed no faster in 
gaining power to make such discrimination than 
the senses, hence the need for the intelligent se- 
lection of means and methods that their progress 
may be as rapid and as economical as possible; 
hence also the reminder that every educational 
scheme which is not based upon sense-perception 
must fail. 

At that point where the self and the not-self 
meet, the mind must respond, or nothing but brain 
activity results. The clock may strike a thousand 
times, objects may pass many times back and forth 
before the eyes, the fragrance of flowers fill every 
corner of the room, but unless the mind gives 
special attention no sensations proper are aroused, 
and one sits oblivious to it all. These excitations 
do enter in a slight way into consciousness, how- 
ever, making up a sort of substratum — a sensation 
continuum, as Dr. Dewey and others call it — 
which affects more or less the general tone of the 
self, no matter in what it happens to be absorbed 
at the time. Any one of them may be quickly 
exalted into consciousness and made the special 
object of attention, while the others are left still 
involved in the subconscious mass. This may be 



THE SENSES.— GENERAL FUNCTIONS. 57 

illustrated at any time by suddenly stopping what- 
ever you may be doing and noting, one after an- 
other, the many things ^yhich you were really see- 
ing and hearing and feeling and even tasting and 
smelling, and yet of which you were not at all 
conscious. This experiment will enable you to see 
clearly that unless the mind specifically differenti- 
ates a sensation from its companions and interprets 
it, gives it meaning, and associates it with the ob- 
ject producing it, there can be no knowledge 
gained. The sensation itself is not knowledge, but 
without it there could be no knowledge. It is 
pure feeling, and becomes knowledge only as it is 
given meaning. Active as a physical force speed- 
ing its way to the brain, it can do nothing now but 
passively wait at the portal for the mind to take 
hold of it and give it meaning. Its various char- 
acteristics, due to its sources, soon become familiar 
to the mind, and sensation and object seem merged 
in one. 

Sensations occupy a more prominent part in 
the life of the child than of the adult, for they are 
practically his only mental food. What a man 
would discover about an object by reflection and 
reason, the child finds out only through the senses. 
He must pull it, bite it, stamp on it, look down its 
mouth, smell it, scratch it, throw it about, no 
matter whether it be a kitten or a brownie. He 
tears the choicest rose to pieces, because that is 
the only way he can find out what is inside. He 
pounds away on a drum or an old tin pan, because 
it affords him pleasing entertainment, and in that 
way he learns something about it. His mind feeds 



58 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

on sensations just as the body feeds on bread and 
meat. He is naturally as hungry for them as he 
is for his meals. To deny them to him is to do 
him as much harm as to deny him food. As Ave 
take pains in supplying the latter, the former 
should with eqvial intelligence and with equal lib- 
erality be provided for him. By this it should not 
be understood that he is to be permitted to de- 
stroy everything that he can get his hands on — 
though there ought to be many things given him 
for that purpose if he so inclines — but that objects 
in variety, particularly from the outside world, 
should always be at his disposal, always be coming 
into his little world. Many children would do less 
damage to the furniture if this propensity could 
only be given indulgence by allowing them to tear 
some worthless things to bits once in a while. It 
needs direction, not suppression — direction not in 
a specific way in these early years, but in a general 
way. There are thousands of things with which 
he may become familiar by such management, and 
that too without realizing that he is making any 
special effort to learn. This informal education in 
these years is just as important as the formal edu- 
cation of the schoolroom which he is soon to enter. 
The sensations thus constantly crowding in 
upon the child will, however, give him little valu- 
able knowledge unless he be wisely, though in- 
formally, guided in getting the meaning out of 
them. He must be helped to understand them. 
With very little aid he will make great progress 
himself. Each discovery of a new power or activ- 
ity in himself will give him entertainment for a 



THE SENSES.— GENERAL FUNCTIONS. 59 

whole da}'. He may make mistakes without num- 
ber, but care will sooner or later bring him around 
to correct most of them himself. There is no 
need for worry that he is losing a multitude of 
opportunities to learn things. A thousand acorns 
are destroyed where one grows into a tree, and 
ten thousand flowers bloom where one produces 
fruit. The wise child is that one who knows every- 
thing he sees; not the one who can tell all the 
stories he has had read to him. 

Furnishing, then, as the senses do, the mate- 
rials which are to be worked up into knowledge, 
everything said in the preceding chapters concern- 
ing their relation to the mind and concerning the 
importance of keeping them in vigorous, healthy 
condition ought to be growing more clear. It is 
important that weakness or latency or disease in 
any sense organ receive special attention as already 
suggested, but in our zeal we must not forget that 
the normal children may be going wrong through 
our neglect. In her efforts to encourage a delicate 
appetite in one child, a mother may allow another 
to become the slave of an artificial or uncontrolled 
appetite. In shielding one from excessive use of 
his eyes, she may overlook the fact that another 
is losing his eyesight in reading fine print or in 
trying to write fine copies for his teacher in pen- 
manship. If boys and girls with perfect senses 
are making no greater progress in sense-perception 
than their less fortunate mates, somebody is at 
fault. They ought to be advancing more rapidW 
in making nice distinctions and accurate observa- 
tions than their defective classmates. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPEKCEPTION. 

The bridge over from the physical to the men- 
tal is found in consciousness. For our present 
purpose consciousness may be defined as the self 
knowing its own states or activities. It is that 
which distinguishes the animal from the plant, 
and which in the child enables him to recognize 
himself as a thinking, feeling, self-active being. 
It enters into every mental activity, and is the 
one great characteristic of all minds. So universal 
is it that many authorities prefer to call the vari- 
ous mental activities phases of consciousness. 

As heretofore explained, external forces, no 
matter how tumultuously they may assail the 
nervous organism, nor how faithfully they may be 
carried to the brain, can not enter the mind save 
through the door of consciousness. Even pain, 
as a toothache or a headache, slips below conscious- 
ness when something else is given a place in it. 
The power to adjust the mind so as to give one 
sensation a place in consciousness to the exclu- 
sion of others is just as much a matter of attain- 
ment as any other power mentioned in this book. 
Harriet Martineau as a young girl visited the sea- 
shore with some friends, and, being of a very 
60 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPERCEPTION. 61 

nervous disposition, was so excited that she at first 
was unable to see the breakers or to hear them 
beating against the rocks. Observe the children 
in your circle for a few days, and note how often 
they have similar experiences. 

Note also how quickly a child becomes inter- 
ested and so wholly absorbed in some object that 
it is difficult to turn his attention to anything 
else. Probably in some cases it is pure willful- 
ness, but it is more often due to our inability to 
get into his consciousness. He does not hear, be- 
cause he is seeing. He does not see, because he 
is hearing. He does not hear nor see you, be- 
cause he is seeing or hearing something else. He 
may not have more pleasure in it than he would 
in you or in what you are trying to offer him, but 
the latter simply does not get into his conscious- 
ness sufficiently, if at all. I have two very little 
friends who, I am assured, love me and frequently 
call up good times they have had with me, but I 
often pass them with a friendly " Good morn- 
ing " that does not affect them any more than it 
does the man in the moon. This explains why 
children often do not hear when mother calls. 
Illustrative of the opposite, however, is the case 
of a little friend thaf; quietly notified her mother, 
who had spent some minutes calling her, though 
she was lying in the grass near by, that she was 
" playing cow, and so, of course, couldn't hear! " 

By its function consciousness is a differentiat- 
ing activity, and, as the sensory ganglia in the 
brain of the newborn babe are scarcely differenti- 
ated, there is little or nothing to come into con- 



62 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

sciousness with any degree of distinctness. Dis- 
comfort or pain, without location or definition, 
causes him to cry, but tlie effort is purely reflex- 
ive. It is possible that by his very cry he rouses 
consciousness to recognize sound as distinct from 
pain if perchance the latter has in some manner 
already found a place there. Consciousness knows 
feelings, states, as well as activities, and the con- 
tinuation or repetition of any new and marked 
sensation is Nature's method of starting the men- 
tal life of the child. How feeble must be this first 
glimmer in conscious life! But it is a glimmer, 
and it is of life! Tha movement thus begun en- 
ables consciousness to distinguish the different 
senses from each other, and then the different 
affections of the same sense, as already explained, 
expanding and strengthening at every step. 

In these early days the child lies enveloped in 
a mass of common feeling, almost exclusively 
sensuous, and the pleasure that comes as one feel- 
ing after another is slightly lifted above its com- 
panion feelings in consciousness is just as grate- 
ful to him as the satisfaction which food brings 
to his appetite. 

But while consciousness is discovering differ- 
ences in these feelings, in some way also one feel- 
ing begins to remind the child of another which 
he once experienced, and the two great relations 
Avhich enter into all knowledge, difference and 
identity, are recognized. What are these relations? 
Simply of difference and likeness in certain sensa- 
tions or feelings. But the grasping of these rela- 
tions constitutes knowledge. As a new sensation 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPERCEPTION. 63 

comes into consciousness, the only meaning which 
it can get is that it is like another which was once 
there. Slowly, yet rapidly enough for the safety 
of the brain, skill in recognizing this likeness and 
its opposite, unlikeness, comes to the child. Many 
times the new is interpreted by means of the old 
until the mind becomes less dependent upon the 
latter, and gets the meaning of the new immedi- 
ately by " reading itself into it." This process is 
called apperception. As consciousness begins as- 
serting itself, each succeeding effort reacts upon 
it, as exercise reacts upon a hand or arm, increas- 
ing its strength and skill, and gives it added power 
to act in similar lines. So to the interpretation or 
to the discovery of relation in each new sensation 
it brings increased ability. This reaction, this 
effect upon the self after each effort, is called re- 
tention. Understanding this, you can see that 
Avhereas in the first acquaintance with a new sen- 
sation or experience we consciously bring the old 
to bear upon it to find out its likeness or differ- 
ence, we are afterward able to bring the self, as 
organized by the past experiences, to bear upon it, 
and thus get its meaning at once without con- 
scious comparison. This is what is meant by 
" reading one's self into it." Yon can also easily 
see that, in whatever general lines a child may be 
exercising his activity, his apperceptive powers, 
or so-called apperceptive organs, will be cor- 
respondingly increased. If he uses his eyes, he 
will soon attain skill in interpreting eye sensa- 
tions; if his ears, in interpreting sound. If he 
live among miners, he will the more readily dis- 



64 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

cern anything pertaining to mining; if among 
sailors, anything pertaining to the sea; if among 
farmers, anything pertaining to the farm. As he 
exercises his mind in counting, he becomes skilled 
in the art of computation; in classifying plants, he 
gains in ability to distinguish flowers and fruits; 
in naming the stars, he rises to a ready apprehen- 
sion of the constellations. It is for this reason 
that the same experience means one thing to a 
scientist and another thing to a merchant; that a 
piece of marble means one thing to a sculptor and 
another to a geologist; that a jardiniere of deli- 
cately branching plants means a vase of maiden- 
hair ferns to one child and " a pot of green feath- 
ers " to another; that the word reed means a long, 
slender grass stalk to the son of a countryman and 
a thin strip of brass to the son of an organ-maker; 
that the cross is a symbol of freedom to one man 
and of oppression to another. 

Everything that comes into the life of the 
child, whether through his environment, his oc- 
cupation, his companions, or his books, affects 
him, organizes him, in such a way as to determine 
in great measure the meaning which he will put 
into and get out of each succeeding experience. 
However strange it may seem, the only meaning a 
child gets out of a thing is that which he puts into it. 
Whatever he is himself he will in kind be getting 
out of each new experience. If you wish to find 
out all about a boy, get him to express himself 
freely in words and actions about some thing 
which you can bring to his notice. His words 
and actions are approximately about the object. 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPERCEPTION. 65 

but they are as truly about himself. In them he 
reveals what he knows, what he is, as clearly as 
a burnished mirror reflects his ruddy face; indeed, 
the only thing he sees in an object is himself, and 
it is himself that he reads not into but in that 
object. 

Put a robin's egg or nest on the desk and 
adroitly get the boys and girls to talking about it 
at recess while you are apparently busy at some- 
thing else. Take mental notes and write them out 
afterward. Test them in the same way with a tad- 
pole, a violet, a strawberry, a snail, a praying 
mantis, a butterfly, a dragon fly, a cotton plant, a 
lump of anthracite coal, and you will soon learn 
more about those children and their homes — what 
they talk about, what they read, where they have 
been, what they are thinking about, what kind of 
language they use, what manners they have, what 
ideas of right and wrong, what they lack, what 
they retain, whether they are accurate or loose in 
their observations, whether they reason well or 
poorly — than you could learn in a whole year by 
direct questions. 

Give a child an idea of a rectangle, and start 
him around to find all the rectangles he can see 
in the room. He will name the windows, the 
doors, the blackboards, the slates, the desks, the 
books, the walls, the ceiling, the panes of glass. 
Try him again with a circle, a triangle, with an 
idea of wood, of cloth, of a nail head, a leaf, a 
pencil, a chair. In all cases he will recognize these 
in objects presented to him only as he is able to 
see that in them which is in himself as idea. This 



66 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

simple principle, so easily verified in children, con- 
trols every onward movement in knowledge-get- 
ting, however slight, and a thorough understand- 
ing of it is essential to any profitable study of 
their development. 

A few simple experiments additional will help 
ns to formulate the laws in accordance with which 
apperception acts. Give a child a piece of candy. 
He instantly puts it into his mouth and gets pleas- 
ure out of it. Some time after, let him choose 
from several articles in your hand, among which 
is a stick of candy like the former, and he prompt- 
ly picks it up. Vary the test from time to time 
with sticks of differing forms and colors. As long 
as the likeness is evident the recognition is ready 
enough. Gradually his knowledge extends until 
he will with fair certainty pick candy of any form 
or color from among a variety of articles, even 
though some of them may be round and colored so 
as at least to suggest the first stick he ate. It 
does not take any one long to see that similarity 
in form or color enables the child to discover the 
second as a stick of candy, and also to see that the 
association of the sweet taste with that of form 
and color in the one experience was sufficient to 
suggest sweet taste again when the form and color 
in the second stick were recognized. He could 
see by similarity that the second was a stick of 
candy, and that, being a stick of candy, it must 
also be sweet. In both cases he reads his former 
experience into it, and gets its meaning as a stick 
of candy. The law of apperception by similarity, 
then, may be stated as follows: 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND APPERCEPTION. 67 

^Yhen the mind recognizes elements in an ex- 
perience as similar to tliose in a previous experi- 
ence, it immediately gives the new experience the 
same meaning as the old. 

This law is dependent upon the great law of 
association which may now be stated: 

The elements of ivhich any experience is com- 
posed become so related in the mind by the associa- 
tion that the recurrence of one tends to bring back 
the others. 

This law not only makes apperception but all 
knowledge-getting possible. At sight of the stick 
of candy, the sensation of taste also returns to the 
mind; at sight of a hot poker, the fact that it will 
burn comes back to the child; at sound of the 
bark of the dog, comes also the picture of the dog; 
at the touch of its fur, the picture of a cat and 
of its sharp claws; at sight of the chair, the pic- 
ture of a man sitting on it; at the sound of the 
clock striking the hour of nine, the children sing- 
ing the Gloria for the opening of school. These 
last illustrations show how contiguity in time or 
place may help the apperceptive process as well 
as similarity. 

It must be clear enough to any teacher that 
the principle of apperception sufficiently explains 
the need for a sequence of studies and of subjects 
in each study, so that the learning process will be 
easy, natural, economical. It also shows that any 
method of instruction which adheres strictly to 
the class plan and ignores the differences in the 
individual pupils is illogical and wasteful. It is 
more important that the teacher find out the facts 



68 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

already mentioned in this chapter concerning the 
kind and extent of each child's knowledge, to- 
gether with his skill in using what he knows in 
getting further knowledge, than that he should 
have all of the information which the best set of 
school records in the world can give. The best 
training which can be given a child is not that 
which fills his head with facts, but that which 
enables him to use to the best possible advantage 
the facts which he does get. The man with small 
capital and great capacity is sure to be rich; the 
man with great capital and little capacity will soon 
be poor. The principle holds just as w^ell in the 
mental and spiritual world. 



CHAPTEE X. 

APPERCEPTION (CONTINUED). — ATTENTION. 

The reason that a certain experience means 
one thing to one child and another to a second is 
due in large measure, as has been explained, to 
the differences in their previous experiences and 
education. If a rabbit is brought into the room, 
one child will flee from it, while another will im- 
mediately fondle it; one will notice its color, an- 
other its fur, another its ears, another its tail, 
another its teeth, another its eyes, another the 
way it runs. If a doll is brought in, one will speak 
of its clothes, another of its face, another of its 
hands, another of its hair, another of the mate- 
rial of which it is made. If you pronounce the 
word corn to the children, one will think of canned 
corn, another of popcorn, another of corn grow- 
ing in the field, another of corn meal, another of 
sweet corn, another of Kaffir corn, another of 
broom corn, another of the corn on father's big 
toe; still others may think of a grain of corn, its 
shape, its color, its size, its use, etc. 

An additional reason for this great variety in 
the things first noticed and first mentioned by 
them will be found, if you carry the experiments 
far enough, in the fact that they are the ones in 

69 



YO THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

which for the time at least the children are most 
interested. This interest is caused by the pleas- 
ure which is given the child at the time or which 
it has experienced in the past. The pleasure may 
be enhanced by the familiarity or the novelty of 
the object, or of some element or elements in it. 
It may be sensuous or intellectual, real or im- 
agined. It is this which gives it value. Any- 
thing has value for us which has power to con- 
tribute to our enjoyment. The fur of the rabbit 
is soft to the touch, and so delights the child; 
the snow-white of its tail in contrast with the 
brownish gray of its body pleases the eye, and so 
he becomes interested in its color. The bright 
ribbons on the doll stimulate the optic nerve, and 
interest is quickened at once. The mention of 
corn calls up the roasting ears at yesterday's din- 
ner, because of the enjoyment they furnished. It 
must be remembered that the term pleasure is ap- 
plied to every kind of feeling, whatever its source, 
which is in harmony with our being. Its oppo- 
site term, pain, is applied to feelings not in har- 
mony with it. Interest may arise from the latter 
as well as from pleasure, and so value may be 
either positive or negative. Value may be natural 
or acquired — that is, it may belong to the object 
itself or it may be due to the particular meaning 
it has for us. Two knives may be exactly alike, 
but one is a present from mother, and therefore 
is worth a thousand times as much as the other. 
A lock of hair may be soft and silken, and as such 
please all who look at it, but to the one who recog- 
nizes it as the dear curls of a loved baby it has 



APPERCEPTION.— ATTENTION. 71 

value and interest which is beyond computation. 
A lump of silver ore lying on the mountain side 
is nothing but an ordinary stone to us, but it sets 
the imagination of an experienced miner on fire. 
The more knowledge one may have about an ob- 
ject the greater will be the variety of interest it 
arouses. 

The reason a child picks out one object from 
among several is found, then, in the interest it 
arouses in him, or in the value it has for him be- 
cause of its ability to arouse pleasure. It is for 
the same reason that he selects and exalts above 
the others some particular element in an object, 
as, for instance, its color, its shape, its texture, its 
taste, its odor, its utility, its past associations. The 
following laws may easily be verified: 

The mind attaches most value to that ivhich 
gives it most pleasure, antipicated or realized. 

Whatever gives or promises pleasure or pain 
to the child awakens interest. 

The element in an experience which possesses 
tflie nVmt value to the child comes at once iiito 
prominence in consciousness, the others taking a 
subordinate place in apperception or dropping out 
of notice entirely. 

The first may be called the law of value; the 
second, the law of interest; the third, the law of 
disengagement or of dissociation. If it were not 
for these laws, everything would mean practically 
the same thing to us, and differentiation would 
be a very laborious and unsatisfactory process. 
Without interest, knowledge would be shorn of 
much of its charm and life of all its zest. It 



72 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

breaks up monotony, and constantly incites the 
mind to new adjustments. These laws lie at the 
basis of educational principles, and no method of 
instruction can wisely ignore them. 

As stated before, a variety of elements, of sen- 
sations, always lie in mass in consciovisness. Some 
force is necessary to push or pull one of them into 
prominence. >:'If one of the stimuli have sufficient 
value in the way of intensity or quality or pitch 
to arouse interest, pain or pleasure, consciousness 
immediately apprehends it, and it becomes the ob- 
ject of attention. This is the reason we increase 
the volume of the voice or change its quality in 
order to attract the attention of one Avho is ab- 
sorbed in something else. A very small child soon 
learns the philosophy of such a course, and so 
cries louder or with a different tone in case mother 
does not promptly respond. 

When the mind is concentrated upon some 
particular element in an experience, it is said to 
be giving attention. This is essential to all apper- 
ception, to all knowledge. The reason for the 
selection of a particular element to the exclusion 
of others has already been sufficiently explained. 
The isolation from the others must be so complete 
that it Avill not be confused with them. That 
being secured, the self must be brought to bear 
upon that element by adjusting all of its powers 
to it so as to find its meaning. There is very great 
difference in merely looking at a thing to the ex- 
clusion of other things, and in turning the whole 
of one's activities upon it in order to interpret it. 
There will be no meaning in it until the mind dis- 



APPERCEPTION.— ATTENTION. 73 

covers correspondence between the new elements 
and those with which it is already familiar. It is 
for this reason that rapidity in adjustment should 
be sought constantly. Many children wear their 
eyes out staring at a thing, imagining that they 
are giving attention. If they are not at the same 
time actively engaged in fitting themselves to it, 
as it were, there is little hope of their becoming 
any the wiser. A further word in the way of illus- 
tration may be in place. A child was given a key. 
He immediately toddled to the door and tried to 
insert it in the keyhole. Had he not brought to 
bear upon it his past knowledge and discovered 
identity or likeness, such a movement would have 
had no significance Avhatever. I gave a word, 
felicific, to a class of young men and women not 
long since. It had no meaning to them, in spite 
of all their efEorts to " remember." I suggested a 
division of the word, and lo! one of them saw at 
once his old friends felix and felicity, and another 
recognized in fie the essence of fiction, and they 
were not Latin students either. A little practice 
following enabled them to adjust their knowledge 
of words to the interpretation of many strangers 
with surprising facility. I stepped off the train 
once at midnight in a blinding storm and started 
to find a hotel I had been told was not far away. 
I soon discovered that I was lost, when a flash of 
lightning, though lasting but an instant, revealed 
a score of objects to me. Almost before it was 
gone I had brought to bear upon them all the 
description given me, and had located the hotel so 
accurately that I was able to go directly to its door. 



74 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Accuracy is as important in the adjustment as 
rapidity. In one sense, we may say that there is 
really no adjustment that is not accurate. If the 
process lack intelligence and self-control, flurry, 
confusion, and waste must result. There is a kind 
of superficial adjustment which comes so easily 
and so quickly that the deeper meanings are en- 
tirely overlooked. Dr. Baldwin very aptly calls 
such attention liquid attention, for it as quickly 
loses the effect of the new knowledge as water loses 
the form of the vessel from which it has been 
poured. 

Follow up all of this with a variety of tests and 
experiments, and discover how and why children 
differ in the rapidity and accuracy of their ad- 
justment to common things. Find how easily they 
are deceived and how quickly they learn to adjust 
themselves with greater ease. 

Apperception is not complete, however, until 
this adjustment has resulted in uniting or identify- 
ing the new elements with others already familiar 
to the mind. The disengagement which took it 
away from its companion elements in conscious- 
ness makes possible its association and alliance 
with others of its own kind and name. The recog- 
nition of some such relationship is, of course, 
essential to the adjustment already described, but 
the final stage reacts, intensifies, and reaffirms the 
identification and assimilation, so that the mean- 
ing takes definite form as an idea. The idea may 
be simple or complex, depending upon the num- 
ber of elements which the mind may relate and 
combine with it. Practice enables the child to 



APPERCEPTION.— ATTENTION. 75 

hold in mind an increasing number of relations, 
and his attention becomes " many-sided " — that is, 
he is able to apprehend and give meaning at once 
to many elements in an experience. 

Hold some strange object before the class for 
an instant, then discover how many things each 
pupil can name in writing about it. Find out, if 
possible, why some of them saw so little in it. 
Their own explanations may be of value in adapt- 
ing means and methods to their needs. 

The term relation has been used several times, 
and its meaning ought not to be misunderstood. 
It is simply the connection which the mind gives ob- 
jects because of the discovery of common or lihe ele- 
ments. It is that which enables a child to con- 
nect or to see the whole in the part, the cause in 
the effect, the class in the individual, the resem- 
blance or contrast of one object with another in 
color, or form, or size, or texture. It leads to all 
identification and differentiation. By it knowl- 
edge rises from the individual to the class, the re- 
lation, the common element, becoming more ideal 
and more universal with each succeeding experi- 
ence. 



CHAPTER XI. 

SYMBOLISM. 

Each object in the universe is the expression 
of an idea. No flower of the field, no pebble by 
the wayside, no bird that skims the air, no star 
that glimmers in the wide expanse of heaven, can 
be what it is save as the realization, the concrete 
individual expression of that which first existed 
as idea. Each stands as the sign of the idea out 
of which it was born. That idea is its true mean- 
ing, and it is that, and that alone, which we 
strive to find in all knowledge-getting. A child 
wishes to communicate the idea to me that he has 
hurt his finger; he holds it up and moans. In 
getting the meaning of his gesture and cry, I am 
simply getting the idea of which they are the 
expression or the sign. He brings an apple and 
a knife and lays them on my lap. The meaning 
of this act is the idea that originated and directed 
it. He utters a word, and its meaning is the idea 
he chose it to express. He draws a rough picture; 
it is meaningless save as I find the idea prompting 
it. What is true of everything that the child or 
the man creates or does is also true of everything 
that God creates, whether it be a mountain or a 
continent, a dewdrop or an ocean, a tree or a lion. 
76 



SYMBOLISM. Y7 

Everything having form, whether in art or nature, 
is the sign of an idea, and gets significance from 
that fact, and that only. 

Whatever stands in place of an idea as its 
representative is called its sign, its symbol. It 
may be an object, a color, an odor, a taste, a move- 
ment, a gesture, a sound, a word. It may suggest 
the idea by its inherent character or by conven- 
tional agreement. As an example of the former, 
the word rush by its sound suggests the idea and 
the action for which it stands; the same is true of 
the words cluck, buzz, thrush, sneeze, etc. As 
an example of the latter, see the words in this 
sentence. A slight likeness of meaning suggests 
an object as a sign or symbol of an idea. In this 
way the square became the symbol of integrity; 
the chain, of fellowship; the dove, of innocence; 
the egg, of life; the eye, of frankness. By virtue 
of its relationship the part is able to symbolize 
the whole, as a sail the ship; a chimney, a house; 
a hand, the body; so the cause symbolizes the ef- 
fect, as a match, a fire; a drought, short crops; a 
runaway horse, danger; so an instrument symbol- 
izes an action, as the sword, war; the pen, peace; 
cordage and anchor, commerce; the retort, sci- 
ence. Each has its true meaning only as the idea 
for which it stands is apprehended. Accidental 
association often gives an object great power as 
a symbol. The cross thus became the symbol of 
Christianity; the garter, of a great order of 
knights; the crescent, of the Ottoman Empire. By 
its intimate relationship with the everyday life 
of a people, a plant or a flower becomes the sym- 



78 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

bol for a nation, as the shamrock for Ireland; the 
thistle for Scotland; the rose for England; the lily 
for France; the lotus for Egypt. 

Ideas rise from objects. Engrossed with the 
former, we forget that the office of the latter is 
to serve as symbols, as tangible expressions of that 
which existed in another mind. Objects have no 
other right to be. While at first all the ele- 
ments of an object must be apprehended through 
the senses before its full meaning can be under- 
stood, it soon happens, as a result of association 
and familiarity, that one element is sufficient to 
enable the mind to apprehend the whole object 
and get its full meaning. As an illustration, the 
odor is sufficient to call up the full picture of the 
rose; the taste, of an apple; the voice, of a friend; 
the ears, of a rabbit; a feather, of an ostrich; a 
letter, of a word. All of the foregoing depends 
upon the principle of symbolism. The wiser one 
becomes, the deeper and wider becomes the mean- 
ing of every sensuous element, the less dependent 
is he upon his sensations, for each sensation in- 
creases in symbolizing power — that is, in power 
to stand as the representative of other sensations 
and corresponding meanings. I hear the ringing 
of a bell, and instantly there comes to my mind 
the eye picture of a bell, its shape, its material, 
its si^, and~ also of the word bell. I hear the 
Avord hell pronounced, and I at once image the 
sound of a bell, together with the other qualities 
just mentioned, and possibly also image the writ- 
ten or printed word bell, and probably also the 
muscular movement necessary to write it. 



SYMBOLISM. 79 

The sound of the hell or of the word hell may 
also stmiulate the imaging of the building in 
which it is located, its use, its history, etc. You 
prohably now understand what was meant by one 
sense symbolizing another, and how it happens 
that in simply tasting an object you are able to 
tell its shape, its texture, and its color, qualities 
that can come directly only through touch and 
sight; that in simply looking at an object yon are 
able to tell whether it is smooth or rough, far or 
near — qualities and relations that originally came 
through touch and muscular sensation only. You 
must also see in this the incalculable value of 
symbols in all knowledge-getting. They vast- 
ly multiply the mind's power of attaining 
knowledge both in rapidity and comprehensive- 
ness. 

The term symbol is often used of objects hav- 
ing a profound meaning or relationship, in many 
cases far beyond the understanding of the unin- 
itiated or of the average mind. The symbolisms 
of mythology, of some systems of religion, or 
of philosophy, reveal their beauty only to those 
Avho make them objects of special study. It is 
also used in other ways, but for our present 
purpose these uses ought not to be confounded 
with the use as explained in the preceding para- 
graphs. 

If the function of all concrete, sensuous mate- 
rial is now clear, then everything yon see about 
you is aglow with meaning, everything has a story 
to tell you. It is a principle easily recognized in 
psychology that an idea can be communicated 



80 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

from one mind to another only by giving it some 
physical existence, which in turn tlie receiving 
mind idealizes or interprets. The sensuous world 
has another function, however, than that of merely 
serving as the repository of an idea or a group of 
ideas. It through the nervous organism stimu- 
lates mental activity and invites interpretation. 
There is nothing that remains silent. Everything 
knocks at the portals of the mind through some 
of the senses and clamors for recognition. It 
catches the rays of the sun and hurls them into 
the eye, saying, " Look at me." It swings back 
and forth, driving the sound waves into the ear, 
saying, " Hear me." It rubs against you, saying, 
" Feel me." It rushes into the nostrils, insisting 
that you smell it, and squeezes the papillae on the 
back of the tongue, urging you to taste it. In 
these ways it forces itself into the consciousness 
of the child and, as already explained, there sur- 
renders its meaning, the idea it embodies. Every 
time the same sensations are aroused the same 
idea — that is, the same meaning — arises. The 
sensation is that which is interpreted, and in a 
way is a symbol, but it is projected and so inti- 
mately associated with the object causing it that 
to all intents and purposes they are one. In ex- 
amining a sensation which an object produces, we 
usually have no other thought than that we are 
examining the object itself. This is more true of 
the child, for he has not yet learned the philoso- 
phy of the process. 

An idea is always general in its nature. A 
symbol, as an object, is individual, but in mean- 



SYMBOLISM. 81 

ing is general or universal. By saying that it is 
universal we mean that the same meaning or the 
same thought would arise in appereeiving all the 
objects of the class of objects to which that par- 
ticular object belongs. The power of a symbol, 
then, is determined by the depth and comprehen- 
siveness of meaning it contains for the appereeiv- 
ing mind. The less of the sensuous in proportion 
to the meaning it bears, the greater its ability to 
serve the mind. We must not forget that nothing 
has meaning which is not given it by the mind 
itself, and that an object is dependent upon the 
mind for its symbolizing value. Place an object 
before a child, say a hat. Discover what he knows 
about it. Draw now the merest outline of the hat 
on the board. He will probably see nothing there 
but some " curved lines." Fill up the outline a 
little, and he may see nothing more. Shade and 
work in details, developing relief. When the pic- 
ture can hardly be distinguished from the real 
hat, he exclaims, " It is a hat." Repeat the pro- 
cess for a few days, and he will soon learn to recog- 
nize a hat in the slightest outline you can place 
upon the board. Parts of three circles, 
slightly modified, symbolize not that 
hat, but the whole hat tribe to him. 
Long before this he had heard the 
word hat, and that had served to stand in place 
of the hat itself and to symbolize hats in gen- 
eral. Write now the -word liat on the board, 
and by the association of the spoken word, the 
hat, and the picture of the hat, it serves first to 
call up the particular hat, and then to symbolize 
9 




82 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the idea of hats in general. It is readily seen that 
the mere outline has greater symbolizing power 
than the fully shaded picture, and that the word 
hat has more than either. Eepeat the experiment 
with other objects and with other children, and 
note their varying abilities in interpretation. Dis- 
cover why some symbols have greater meaning 
to some children than to others, and why some 
have greater meaning to all. 

The age when children are able to see in a 
colored picture the representation of the object 
varies greatly. A very young child will show some 
interest in himself as seen in the mirror, but prob- 
ably the life in the face, as shown both by expres- 
sion and movement, affords the explanation of it. 
If the face were perfectly still, the recognition 
would come later. Objects in motion are always 
the earliest to attract the attention of the child. 
The interest first shown in colored pictures is due 
more to the presence of the color than to any ap- 
preciation of the form. 

Before a child seems able to distinguish col- 
ored pictures he has by association learned the 
meaning of a few words, and is already using those 
valuable symbols. They serve a marvelous pur- 
pose in enabling him to receive or communicate 
an idea concerning an object when the object itself 
is absent. If he wishes a drink, he may go to the 
pitcher and try to pour out some water. In lieu 
of that he may simply say " drink," and the same 
idea is conveyed. As soon as he learns the great 
convenience of words as symbols, he is disposed to 
discard gestures as rapidly as possible, and be- 



SYMBOLISM. 83 

comes hungry for words. At first, words mean 
objects and actions to him, then relations and 
qualities, their ideal significance becoming more 
abstract and less sensuous until they serve as sym- 
bols of pure ideas, and not simply as representa- 
tives of objects and their phenomena. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LANGUAGE. 

Symbolism makes language possible, the whole 
vocabulary of a people being a great system of 
symbols, each the repository, the representative of 
a thought from which it came and for which it 
speaks. As already stated, many of these words 
originated in an effort to imitate sounds made by 
animals or by bodies in motion; others are purely 
arbitrary forms agreed upon to represent ideas. 
Many words that originally belonged to the former 
class have become so modified by long usage that 
their source is not recognized save by those who 
make language an object of special stvidy. Many 
words, at first used to express sensuous feelings 
and ideas only, through figurative use at last serve 
to express the highest emotions and thoughts of 
the human soul. 

If children who have not learned to use lan- 
guage were left alone, they would easily invent 
a language of their own, though, of course, it 
would contain a limited range of words as com- 
pared with the vocabulary of their parents. The 
impulse to expression is characteristic of every 
child. He is not satisfied simply with expression, 
but strives to express himself in such a way as to 
84 



LANGUAGE. 85 

be understood by others. No matter what kind 
of a sound he utters or what kind of a gesture 
he makes, if he finds himself understood by some 
one else he adopts that sound or gesture to express 
that same idea in the futvire. Every child has 
some words or gestures of his own manufacture 
which he finds profitable to use even after he has 
learned by imitation the Avords and gestures used 
by his associates. 

A child at my table one day, when thirsty, 
uttered a sound resembling the caw of a tired 
crow, and the mother, divining its want, gave it 
a drink. That peculiar sound served the same pur- 
pose for many months, until by imitation it began 
to use the word drink. A little friend called 
sugar " gogo " for a year or more before she at- 
tempted to say sugar. Another habitually ex- 
tended a finger toward any object he wished and 
closed it quickly, repeating the process with great 
rapidity until his wish was gratified. A little niece 
used the word hum for large, and as she learned 
the names of things long persisted in saying 
" bum-bed," " bum-apple," " bum-cat," etc. Even 
small children agree among themselves to call cer- 
tain objects and actions by certain " made-up " 
names. In many cases the children agree upon 
some prefix or suffix to attach uniformly to all 
words they use, and make a language which is 
often difficult for adults and strangers to under- 
stand. Dr. Oscar Chrisman has gathered a mass 
of interesting information concerning children's 
secret languages, which shows how fertile are their 
little brains in devising vocabularies of their own. 



86 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

The iitility of the language spoken by those 
about him is so easily seen by the child that as 
soon as he has picked up a few words he becomes 
as greedy for others as the Sylene Dragon did for 
children to swallow. He catches them up on 
every hand, putting them into immediate use with 
such intelligence and accuracy as to surprise every- 
body about him. He apprehends the meaning of 
hundreds of them intuitively, seldom asking for 
their definition. I have yet to discover the child 
that before attempting to read has asked for the 
meaning of the more common conjunctions, prepo- 
sitions, interjections, demonstrative pronouns, and 
adjectives. The meaning of many of them readily 
reveals itself in their concrete association, but the 
slight hint even thus often given shows with what 
insight the child is already endowed. Few chil- 
dren learn words in a formal way, and yet at the 
age of six many of them have amassed a vocabu- 
lary of from fifteen to eighteen hundred words 
which they can use with fair accuracy. I know a 
healthy child two years of age that speaks but ten 
words, and yet Holden reports that his son spoke 
three hundred and ninety-seven words at the same 
age. Superintendent J. M. Greenwood reports a 
little girl of fifteen months using sixty words, and 
at two years of age using five hundred. The study 
of children's vocabularies is one of the most fas- 
cinating and instructive phases of our subject. 
The following conclusions may be verified in a few 
weeks of investigation: 

1. That after children have learned a few 
dozen words they readily appropriate the new 



LANGUAGE. 87 

words they hear, recalling them as needed, without 
having made any apparent effort to remember 
them. 

2. That children more readily understand and 
use such words as stand as symbols for the objects 
and activities with which they are surrounded, 
picking up relation words with similar ease, 

3. That while children of the same age vary 
greatly in the number of words in their vocabu- 
laries, they seem to have a sufficient number to 
express their ideas, showing that their knowledge 
and vocabularies grow at approximately the same 
rate, and revealing also the function of language 
in knowledge-getting. 

4. That children learn words used of objects 
or actions present much more readily than when 
they are read out of books or given in stories. 

5. That almost without exception children 
who hear good English at home make few gram- 
matical mistakes, but soon fall into grievous errors 
on associating with other children or with adults 
whose speech is faulty. 

I have been surprised at the purity of the dic- 
tion of some very small children. It was as chaste 
and appropriate as that of an Irving or a Gold- 
smith, there being no affectation nor stiffness, no 
high-sounding phrases nor cumbrous words about 
it. Years ago I made the acquaintance of two 
little boys who were talking like philosophers, 
using words of Latin and Greek origin with dar- 
ing assurance. I discovered the explanation in 
the fact that their father was a man of few words, 
and that their mother used Anglo-Saxon only 



88 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

when some word of foreign extraction was not at 
hand. She encouraged the boys to go to the dic- 
tionary for words to use rather than to tlieir as- 
sociates. Both of them were slow thinkers and 
measured talkers. I recently met a boy of eleven 
in the mountains whose home had been there since 
childhood, and found him wonderfully versed in 
the geology of the locality, using technical terms 
with an ease that would give him a hearing in an 
academy of science. 

As already remarked, children seldom lack for 
words to express their ideas. This is particularly 
true of children of from three to twelve years of 
age. The confusion and hesitancy of the youth is 
not generally found earlier in life. Children either 
tell what they know or frankly say they do not 
know. They may often be wrong in what they 
say, but if they think they know a thing they usu- 
ally have a word for it. If these things be true, 
the cultivation of a child's language in these earlier 
years — years in which we have been exalting sense- 
perception — needs to be given greater prominence 
than is now accorded it. Nearly one fourth of 
his life in the public schools is spent on grammar, 
and when that subject is finished he talks and 
writes with no more ease, comparatively speaking, 
than when he took up the study. Grammar is 
too often taught as a means of helping a child 
correct his language, whereas proper guidance in 
these years when he was learning language as 
naturally as he was learning to walk would have 
made all such work unnecessary. 

It is a great error to suppose that the child 



LANGUAGE. 89 

learns to use words intelligently by imitation. He 
pronounces them by imitation, and uses them in 
a mechanical way as he has heard others use them; 
but unless their significance is apprehended, they 
are soon cast aside and forgotten. Words become 
a part of his mental furniture, his mental organ- 
ism, or they prove of little service. The child has 
no more use for words without meaning than he 
has for dolls without heads. Words have meaning 
only as they symbolize that which he knows. If 
the knowledge and the word are both born in the 
same experience, they are indissolubly bound to- 
gether thereafter. They can not be forced upon 
the child without doing violence to his nature, 
making him constrained and artificial. This 
serves to indicate not only the way in which words 
become a part of the child, but also the classes 
of words which he should be expected to master. 
Experiment with several children and note their 
inability to cope with abstract terms, however 
small, and yet how quickly they appropriate large 
words if they but express a familiar idea or an 
idea which their past knowledge or capacity now 
enables them to comprehend. Difficulty in pro- 
nunciation may cause a child to avoid or discard 
a word, hence the simpler and more euphonious 
vernacular forms are better suited to him. Many 
words are understood by small children long be- 
fore they attempt to use them, as will easily be 
noted by any observer. 

There comes a time in the child's life when 
words serve a greater purpose than merely to ex- 
press or communicate ideas of things present. 



90 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

They serve also as blocks by means of which a past 
experience is rebuilt or an imaginary one de- 
scribed. It is then that their symbolic value is 
more evident, for they now represent mental pic- 
tures instead of physical objects and activities. 
This new step in the use of language is fraught 
with weighty moment for the child. If with a few 
words he can recall the details of a past experience, 
locating it in time and space, he must also have 
taken a great step forward in mental activity. 
Test some of your younger children and see — 

(1) What proportion of them readily recall the 
details of some occurrences of the week before; 

(2) Whether the children with the larger vo- 
cabularies are as active and accurate as the others. 

Describe some interesting scene in your own 
life, and make similar tests. In both cases you 
will find that some children who do not lack 
words in describing what is present to the senses 
pre surprisingly helpless in attempts to describe 
what they see in the mind as an image only. If 
possible, discover the cause. It may simply be 
lack of experience; it may be something else. 
Whatever it is, the need for intelligent, sympa- 
thetic guidance in the transition is clear enough. 
Words and mind must work in as close alliance 
here as in sense-perception. 

As the child judges and reasons, his language 
must serve him another purpose. You have no- 
ticed how difficult it is to get many children to 
compare objects or pictures directly present be- 
fore them, particularly when the qualities are not 
very prominent or very clearly defined. When, 



LANGUAGE. 91 

however, the absent objects are held before the 
mind by means of their names only, the difhculty 
is multiplied many times over. Here words serve 
their highest function, and the success of the child 
in loading them up with meaning is profoundly 
tested. 

The transition from the use of words applied 
to individual objects to their use in designating 
classes of objects or of activities is often easily 
made by children, and yet some of them accom- 
plish it veFy slowly and very laboriously. The 
use of particles and of inflections to distinguish 
number and gender puzzles them seriously at 
times. Amusing mistakes of both kinds are fre- 
quently related of the children in every household 
at family reunions. The blunders in the use of 
synonyms and homonyms are exceedingly com- 
mon among children who hear language a little 
above their comprehension, or who are required 
to commit passages to memory without under- 
standing their meaning. The following illustrate 
them: A little friend of mine was given the text, 
" The Son of man came into the world not to be 
ministered unto but to minister." She went off 
repeating it to herself, and returned in a few mo- 
ments, surprising her monitor by saying, " Tbe 
Son of man came not to be preachered unto but 
to preacher." " A double-minded man is un- 
stable in all his ways " was, after a similar effort, 
announced as follows, " A double-minded man is 
in the stable all the time." Another little sprite 
in the same family who had heard " The Goblins " 
recited attempted it herself, and where the boy 



92 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD, 

quickly dons his " roundabout " she assuringly as- 
serted that he put on his " whereabouts." A study 
of these movements in the language of the child 
will not only prove interesting in themselves, but 
will be fruitful of suggestions in a pedagogical 
way. 

The various transitions in the use of language 
already mentioned are more or less critical stages 
in the child's mental development, but the step 
by which he also grasps the words as eye pictures 
is no less critical. That a few straight lines and 
curves having no characteristic common with the 
objects they symbolize should have meaning as 
well as the spoken word is as much of a marvel 
to every child as it was to the Indians who held 
Captain John Smith prisoner. In these days of 
reading and writing, the learning of both by the 
cliildren is taken as a matter of course by parents 
and teachers, but so much in their intellectual life 
is dependent upon the method by which it is ac- 
complished that it becomes at once one of the 
greatest problems that confront the teacher. Our 
limitations prevent further discussion here, but 
we hope not further inquiry and study on the 
part of the reader. 

On language as related to muscular control, 
see the latter part of the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 

The nerves controlling the voluntary muscles 
of the body lie everywhere in pairs, one for the 
right and one for the left side. Branching off 
from the spinal cord, they divide and subdivide 
into delicate filaments that reach even the mi- 
nutest muscles of the body. They parallel the 
sensory nerves, which carry information of periph- 
eral disturbance to the brain. Through them the 
movements of all the organs are directed. As ac- 
curate information concerning the stimuli that 
arouse sensation is dependent upon the healthy 
and prompt action of the sensor or afferent nerves, 
so intelligent and effective motor control is de- 
pendent upon similar conditions in the motor or 
efferent nerves. The earlier movements of the 
child are due almost entirely to reflex action, 
many of them serving useful ends in its physical 
economy. Their automatic nature is easily shown 
when the child has reached the stage of develop- 
ment in which it begins to direct the same move- 
ments by its own will, for much of the inborn 
skill, having served its purpose, then suddenly dis- 
appears, and control is regained only by intelligent 
and patient practice. 

93 



94 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

"Whatever may be the mystery of connection 
between the mind and the nervous system, this 
much is clear, that the fact of such a connection 
can not be denied. It is also clear that this won- 
derful mechanism of the human frame becomes 
responsive to the demands of the will only through 
education and training. Purely reflex impulses 
may throw the head and arms and body and legs 
about in a promiscuous way, satisfying the phys- 
ical cravings for activity, but the putting of a 
hand or a foot in a certain chosen spot is a very 
different thing. " Making both ends meet " — that 
is, grasping the toes — for the first time is a great 
feat in motor control. The movements of the 
facial muscles in taking food or crying or smiling 
have little of the purely voluntary element in them 
until they are used for a purpose more or less defi- 
nitely outlining in the mind of the child. When 
that movement comes clearly into the conscious- 
ness of the child as of his own origination and 
direction, he has leaped beyond the bonds of the 
mere animal and already entered into the realms 
of spiritual existence; he is already building ideals 
and realizing them; the wisest man on the earth 
can do no more. By these movements and their 
accompanying sensations he gradually differenti- 
ates himself from the outside world, and discovers 
himself and it as having mutually independent 
existences: the one moving at his will, the other 
fixed and stable. 

For lack of space we can not tarry over the 
multitude of interesting experiments in motor 
control which the child makes in the first months 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 95 

of his life, though they would throw much light 
upon the problem later on. A knowledge of the 
details of the structure of muscles in general and 
of their functions is necessary to its proper appre- 
hension, and it might be well to refresh the mem- 
ory a little before proceeding further. The mo- 
tive power originating all muscular movement is 
physical impulse, which has been well defined as 
felt pressure to activity. That " felt pressure " 
may arise wholly from the accumulation of sur- 
plus nervous or muscular energy which seeks to 
discharge itself in exercise of some kind or as a 
reflex movement in response to some external 
stimulus, or it may arise from the presence of some 
thought, some idea, in the mind which awakens 
a mental impulse to its realization. This mental 
impulse in some magic way arouses a physical 
impulse, and the condition for action is at once 
attained. 

The purely physical origin of the impulse is, 
of course, more marked in the growing child than 
later in life. His whole organism is set up as with 
compressed springs. A full-grown, vigorous man 
is forced into the little space the child now occu- 
pies, and he must expand to that man's stature 
and that man's adroitness and skill. For that pur- 
pose he eats and sleeps and exercises; for it he 
crams every little cell in his body with nourish- 
ment until it is alive with energy. No wonder 
he rolls and runs and jumps and tumbles and pulls 
and pushes and twists from the moment he opens 
his eyes in the morning until he is put to bed at 
night. He can not help it. He ought not to help 



96 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

it. It is natural with him. That is the way he 
grows. He is kneading himself as a woman kneads 
dough, and for practically the same purpose. That 
which he eats must be mixed through and through 
him, losing itself in him and becoming a part of 
him. The excellence of both bread and child de- 
pends upon the thoroughness of the kneading. 
The energy with which the child is constantly 
charging thus fulfills its mission. 

Study the children in your circle and Jot down 
your conclusions concerning the physical and men- 
tal condition of those whose impulses to exercise 
are freely indulged and of those who are inclined 
to exercise but little. 

Whether the impulse is of physical or mental 
origin, its direction and control belong to the in- 
tellect. Whether the child is crawling or rolling 
or walking or reaching out his hands as he has 
something more or less clearly in mind for which 
he is trying to reach or which he is trying to do, 
he calls certain muscles into action which he 
thinks will accomplish that end. The knowledge 
of the muscles to use and the skill to control 
them come through a long course of experimenta- 
tion. At his first voluntary efforts to reach out 
to something the child bends over with his whole 
body, instead of extending his hand alone, often 
losing his balance and doubling up in a helpless 
heap. As he tries to crawl, the same thing occurs. 
In both cases certain instinctive impulses to pro- 
tection throw out the arms and hands and legs 
and feet, one or all, to little practical purpose at 
the time it may be, but revealing at least vaguely 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 97 

to the child their function and use. A few such 
experiences add suflficiently to the child's knowl- 
edge to start him to experimenting with them, 
and he soon learns how to move them independ- 
ently of each other, and also how to move them 
together at his will. Spend a short time each day 
for a few weeks with a little child, and see how 
he learns to suppress certain superfluous and ob- 
structive movements and to develop others that 
serve his purpose. Watch him as he takes hold 
of an object, as a pencil, as he tries to lift a spoon- 
ful of food to his mouth, as he balances himself 
by his chair and essays to walk, as he attempts 
to pronounce a word he hears you speak, as he is 
doing the multitude of little things which his 
ever-changing moods suggest to him. Compare his 
movements with those of other children of simi- 
lar age, and, if possible, find the reason for the 
differences you may discover. 

Your observations will show you that some 
children are more active than others; that some 
of the sluggish ones move with great precision, 
while some of the active ones are always blunder- 
ing; that some use three or four times as much 
energy in doing certain things as others; that 
some seem to lose all control of their muscles at 
times, while others are never disconcerted; that 
the movements of the whole arm or the whole leg 
are gradually broken up into movements of the 
forearm, the hand, the fingers, the lower leg, the 
foot, the toes, Just as the movements of the whole 
body were broken up into those of its larger parts; 
that with practice the movement in all cases be- 
10 



98 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

comes more and more definite; that less and less 
stimulus is required to incite activities as control 
becomes more complete; that the clearer the idea 
in the mind of the child of what he wishes to do, 
the more readily he accomplishes it; that with 
each repetition a movement is the more easily 
reproduced, and soon becomes almost automatic; 
and that emotional and physical control grow ap- 
proximately together. For the purpose of verify- 
ing these and discovering additional facts, ask 
the children to thread a needle, draw a straight 
line, walk a chalk line on the floor, touch the 
thumb with one finger, and then move the other 
fingers on the same hand independently, etc. 

You never had any doubt that muscular con- 
trol is to be learned by every child, but ere you 
have half finished the experiments suggested yon 
have probably discovered that muscular control 
may be greatly aided by education, and also that 
there is much to learn about conducting the opera- 
tion. Not only is the healthy and symmetrical 
development of the child dependent upon it, but 
his ability to execute the varied and delicate move- 
ments demanded in the attainment of skill in all 
physical activity. Grace in standing or sitting or 
walking is attained only by muscular control in 
accordance with ideal standards. It comes in 
many cases slowly and laboriously, but early and 
intelligent instruction will greatly facilitate its 
acquirement. For details consult some good au- 
thority on physical exercises for children. This 
is a good place, however, to say that no forcing 
process will avail. Nature never gets in a hurry. 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 99 

We can furnish conditions; she does the rest. 
Learn a lesson from the fields. Some of the most 
graceful animals in them were the most ungainly 
in their infancy. Physical constitution must af- 
fect progress in physical control, and the attempt 
so often made to compel uniformity in children's 
movements can but result in distortion and medi- 
ocrity. It is well known that many children are 
easy and natural in their movements until some 
fatal day self-consciousness suddenly develops, 
and the consequent embarrassment sadly inter- 
feres with self-control. A word in sport, un- 
friendly criticism, consciousness of inferiority or 
superiority, slight physical indisposition, failure 
in something attempted, lack of confidence in 
self, etc., are among the causes producing it. I 
once knew a child who, because of a mishap in 
his first effort to walk, did not attempt it again for 
nearly a year. Another alarmed her parents be- 
cause after an evident effort to talk at the usual 
time she remained dumb until nearly three years 
of age. Imagine their relief when one day she 
broke out like a magpie, astounding them all by 
the accuracy and fluency of her utterances! In 
this educative process, as in every other, sympa- 
thy and encouragement are two essentials. 

Wlien you reflect that gesture, speech, draw- 
ing, writing, vision, facial expression, and all man- 
ual dexterity, in addition to the movements al- 
ready mentioned, depend upon perfect muscular 
control, its relation to the art and the artisan side 
of life becomes clear enough. Too often physical 
control means simply suppression of impulses. 



100 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

This is the negative side only. Its positive and 
practical side is seen in every effort which man 
makes to accomplish work, whether in the way of 
moving a part or all of himself or of shaping and 
molding something external to himself. There 
are a hundred and fifty thousand words in the 
English language alone, and yet in sound they are 
easily distinguished. As each one of them can 
be pronounced only by making its characteristic 
combination of muscular movements in the vocal 
organs, the question of motor control as related to 
language rises at once to a dignity scarcely less 
than that of thought control itself. That the 
child by a few years' experimenting can place these 
muscles under such control as to enable him to 
make instantly the combination necessary to pro- 
duce a sound he has just heard is cause for per- 
petual wonder. He learns much by pure imita- 
tion, but only the larger muscular movements in 
speech can be learned that way. All the fine 
shades of tone and volume and accent can be 
produced only as he learns by experimentation the 
corresponding shades of muscular movement. 

Sound utterance calls at once into requisition 
the delicate muscles of the vocal cords, the mus- 
cles controlling the form of the mouth and the 
movements of the lips and the muscles regulating 
respiration. Vocal expression in speaking, read- 
ing, and singing is dependent upon the ease and 
skill with which all of these muscles are con- 
trolled. The sensitiveness and delicacy of their 
response is in proportion to the fineness and mo- 
bility of their structure. Both are attained by 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 101 

patient and intelligent cultivation. By it the ear 
pictures of certain sounds become so intimately 
associated with their counterparts, the muscular 
pictures, that the presence of the former in the 
mind instantly and without effort accurately calls 
back the latter. Successful voice culture always 
has this for its end. Faulty articulation, stam- 
mering, lisping, lack of force, unpleasant quality, 
wrong pitch, etc., are generally due to inability 
to control properly the muscles named. The rem- 
edy has already been named, but it must be re- 
membered that the fault may lie in the ear pic- 
ture and not in the muscular picture. My friend 
Professor Jones tells me that he frequently has 
pupils in his classes who persist in singing flat or 
sharp, and that he requests them not to sing at 
all until they can sing the correct note. Some- 
times they are silent for several days, and all at 
once they sing in perfect accord with the others. 
It is probable that during the interim they have 
been more or less unconsciously trying to produce 
the corresponding muscular movement as they 
have been correcting the ear picture of the sound. 
In reading and in singing by note, the eye picture 
and the muscular picture must be equally sug- 
gestive and interchangeable. The sight of the 
word or note instantly sets the machinery in mo- 
tion to utter it. Long practice is just as necessary 
here as in the other case. This is the explanation 
of the inability of some people to sing by note 
who readily sing " by ear." The explanation is 
scientifically correct, for they have learned to sing 
by fitting their muscular movements to the ear 



102 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

and not to the eye picture. It is for the same 
reason that one person plays on the violin or other 
musical instrument by ear or by eye (note) only; 
the muscles of the hand and arm are trained to re- 
spond to but one class of mental pictures, and are 
helpless in the presence of the other. 

Muscular control easily falls into grooves, and 
into very narrow grooves, too. The good penman 
may not be able to do anything in drawing. He 
may write vertically with dispatch and elegance, 
but make a poor scrawl in " natural slant." A 
good artist may be a poor penman. A fluent 
speaker of the German language may never suc- 
ceed in pronouncing an English word correctly. 
One may be able to play beautifully on the piano, 
and yet scarcely play Old Hundred on the organ so 
that it will be recognized. 

All physical education includes muscular con- 
trol. To secure the best results for the children, 
the exercises should be both of a class and of an 
individual character; the former to meet gen- 
eral, the latter, individual needs. Lack of ability 
to perform certain movements may be due to 
weakness as well as to lack of control. Certain 
muscles may be behind their companions in de- 
velopment, and hence may need special cultiva- 
tion. 

It is not within the province of our plan to 
enter into details concerning motor control in 
the various arts, however interesting the subject 
might be. Manual training embraces penmanship, 
drawing, modeling, the use of tools in general, 
each leading up to useful and gainful occupa- 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 103 

tions, requiring the ready command of all the 
voluntary muscles, particularly those of the arms 
and fingers. As success in life is to be so largely 
dependent upon the deftness and endurance of 
arms and fingers, every child is entitled to the edu- 
cation that insures both. Dexterity in any of the 
arts is best attained by anticipating them in child- 
hood and youth, when the whole organism is await- 
ing direction, and when it easily responds to 
treatment. In later life form and movement are 
fixed, changes being made with difficulty; hence 
training makes little progress, and rare skill sel- 
dom results. It is on this account that motor 
control assumes such importance in childhood; for 
this reason that methods of teaching the subjects 
mentioned so vitally affect the future as well as 
the present well-being of the child. Movement 
and muscular control are the only things worth 
striving for in his earlier years; the finished prod- 
uct will come in its proper time. All exercises in 
penmanship and drawing which cramp the fingers 
or interfere with the free movement of the muscles 
do more harm than good. In every case the larger 
and freer movements should come first, the finer 
and the more restricted later. This is the law of 
all control. That children in the lower grades 
write well is not necessarily a compliment to the 
teacher. I have seen several children who were 
beautiful penmen at eight or ten years of age, 
and yet at twelve or fourteen were such scrawlers 
that they could hardly read their own writing. 
Finger exercises on the piano, the organ, the type- 
writer, and other instruments must be in accord 



104 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

with the laws governing the development of phys- 
ical control, as many poor children have learned 
to their sorrow and at great expense of time and 
labor. 

We have said that by experience the proper 
muscular movements for doing certain things be- 
come pictured in the mind the same as pictures 
furnished by the eye and the ear, and that they 
become so intimately associated with one or both 
of the latter that they mutually suggest each 
other. The cause of this suggestion is found in 
the fact that the association has made them parts 
of the same experience, the same whole, the same 
picture. At first, the intellect and will are re- 
quired to direct the movement, but with repetition 
their attention becomes less and less necessary, 
and both are left free to think and plan while the 
movement goes on to completion. As an illustra- 
tion, I am now writing the words in this sentence; 
as I start to write each one of them, I am think- 
ing about what word to write next, but the mus- 
cular movement necessary to write each continues 
" of its own accord " until the word is finished. 
So complete has become the alliance that the self 
in thought and the self in action are one and the 
same thing. This is the ideal in all motor train- 
ing, particularly on the art and the artisan side. 
It is a mistake to suppose that in learning to write 
words the eye picture is the only one that must 
be clearly defined. The muscular picture by 
which each is written is Just as important, and 
when the child has made it as fully a part of him- 
self as the eye picture he is in no danger of mis- 



MUSCULAR OR MOTOR CONTROL. 105 

spelling it; hence the importance of accuracy and 
rapidity on the part of the children as they learn 
to write words. 

That muscular control is dependent upon the 
condition of the nervous system is easily seen in 
any child; indeed, the organization of the mus- 
cular system carries with it the organization of 
the nervous system also. Every vital function, 
every activity of the body is controlled and regu- 
lated by it. Destroy the nerves, and the life of 
the tissue is destroyed also. Muscular control 
implies brain control as well. To secure the hap- 
piest results physical culture, contrary to the 
method so generally in vogue, should begin at the 
nerve centers and work outward. With intelligent 
exercise nerves grow in responsiveness as well as 
in sensitiveness and delicacy. But as the nervous 
system is the immediate servant of the mind, the 
nerve centers are best reached through it. Dr. 
C. W. Emerson says: " Certain mental states pro- 
duce definite effects upon the vocal organs. In- 
duce such states of mind as shall produce the de- 
sired effect in vocal expression. The mental states 
operate directly through the cranial nerves upon 
the vocal organs, and instantaneously change their 
activity." 

Feelings and will as related to motor control 
will be considered in the next two chapters. For 
the relation of play, see the chapter on that sub- 
ject. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

THE FEELINGS. 

The state of the self produced by the excita- 
tion of the nerves is called sensation. The action 
of the waves of light produces the sensation of 
sight; the waves of sound, the sensation of hear- 
ing, etc. All these sensations are called feel- 
ings. They are feelings, however, whose origin 
is purely sensuous. As was explained in a former 
chapter, the mass of physical feelings or sensations 
with which the child is constantly filled constitutes 
in large measure his conscious self. Feelings are 
the internal side of the self. They are the self 
alive internally vdth movement. As the pulse- 
heats are the sign of the existence of the physical 
life, so the feelings are the sign in consciousness 
of the existence of the mental life. They are al- 
ways forcing themselves into consciousness as a 
whole, making the tone or temperament of the 
child, and as individuals demanding particular at- 
tention to the exclusion of others. Feelings are 
purely mental states in distinction from mental 
activities. These " states " are, however, internal 
activities. They bear in a general way the same 
relation to the mental activities of thought and 
will that cellular activities do to muscular activi- 
106 



THE FEELINGS. IQT 

ties. Without the first in either case the other 
could not arise. 

The second class of feelings is called emotions. 
They are produced by the presence of some 
thought in the mind. Their origin is wholly 
mental. They accompany all intellectual activity 
and owe their characteristics to it as sensations 
owe their characteristics to the nature of the phys- 
ical stimulus. As some sensations are pleasurable 
and others painful, so also are the emotions. Both 
get their agreeable or disagreeable character from 
their harmony or lack of harmony with the self. 
If in harmony, satisfaction and pleasure result; 
if out of harmony, the opposite. Sensations pre- 
cede the thought, and are that out of which the 
mind gets meaning or thought. Emotions rise 
as the idea comes, and may be said to follow it. 
Hold an apple before a child; the sensation of 
sight occurs, and he interprets it as that of an 
apple; immediately an emotion of pleasure arises. 
Bring him some bitter medicine; following the 
sensation and thought of what it is comes a feel- 
ing of displeasure. He hears some one speak, and 
recognizes the sound as that of mother's voice; 
emotions of pleasure fill his soul. He hears a 
bark, and recognizes it as that of a dog that has 
bitten him; fear at once possesses him. He is ex- 
pecting pudding for dinner, and mother brings 
him pie instead; disappointment possesses him as 
he sees what it is. In all these cases sensations 
only would result had he not given them meaning. 
Emotions followed only after the sensations were 
interpreted. 



lOS THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Sensations always mingle more or less with 
emotions, each enhancing the pleasure or pain of 
the other according as they happen to be in or 
out of accord. The sound of a voice is more pleas- 
ing to the child as there mingles with it the emo- 
tion arising from the discovery that it is mother's 
voice. The bark of the dog suddenly becomes 
harsh as the child discovers that it is that of the 
biting dog instead of his own little pet, as he had 
supposed. A keepsake is more gratifying to the 
eye than its mate of the same material and form 
because of the emotions it begets. For this reason 
children's emotions and interests are aroused most 
readily by poetry and music. The jingle of words, 
the rapid recurrence of rhythm and rhyme, and 
the abrupt changes in movement, pitch, and vol- 
ume excite sensations, sustain the attention, and 
quicken the emotions. Hey diddle, diddle, the cat 
and the fiddle, has far more pleasure and interest 
for the child than the cat and the violin. Rock-a- 
bye baby upon the tree top would have died the day 
it was born had there been only the motion of 
ordinary prose in it. 

~^. Children's emotions usually reveal themselves 
in nervous activity of some kind. It does not 
take an expert to read a child's feelings in the 
expression on his face, the light of his eye, or 
the movements of his hands and arms. Only as 
a child learns to dissemble can he repress the 
revelation. In some children, as you will see by 
observation, the sympathy between the nervous 
system, both vegetative and cerebro-spinal, is 
much more intimate and responsive than in others. 



THE FEELINGS. 109 

A little nephew of mine had such a telltale coun- 
tenance that even the slightest shades of emotion 
were constantly expressing themselves in the ever- 
changing lights and shadows that played over his 
face. His complexion was as pure and clear as 
truth itself, and the freshness of each returning 
blush made me feel that I was nearer the actual 
soul of the child than I had ever been before. 
Wonder, pleasure, doubt, confidence, fear, anger, 
surprise, humor, embarrassment, annoyance, dis- 
appointment, weariness, supplanted each other in 
quick succession, outrivaling in variety and beauty 
the rarest combinations of tints that the most cost- 
ly kaleidoscopes unfold. Discover how many of 
the children in your circle are " so nervous " 
that they become perceptibly or violently agitated 
as any of the above-named emotions arise; note 
how the agitation expresses itself. Classify the re- 
sults in each case, and, if possible, discover the 
cause. In fright, some will blush and some will 
blanch. Why? Discover how the emotions affect 
appetite, digestion, respiration, circulation, sleep, 
motor control in general, etc. 

In your investigations you will find that the 
well-balanced emotional nature is usually a sign 
of a healthy, well-balanced physical organism, re- 
affirming the idea of their interdependence and 
emphasizing the importance of everything that has 
been said concerning the care and development of 
the body of the child. XYou will doubtless also 
discover that you have orten dealt unjustly with 
children because of your lack of knowledge of this 
fact; that often the very evil you had been try- 



110 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ing to cure had but been grievously aggravated by 
the methods you had pursued. Experiment now 
in controlHng the emotions of the children by giv- 
ing them appropriate things to think about, and 
note how promptly physical agitation subsides as 
some gentler emotion replaces a violent or an un- 
pleasant one. 

Many interesting reports have been published 
on inquiries made concerning the presence and 
origin of the different emotions in the child, and 
you will be pleased to make similar investigations 
in your circle. They seem to show in a general 
way that many children are entirely devoid of 
fear even after they enter their teens, and that 
a small per cent grow into manhood and woman- 
hood without knowing what fear is save by hear- 
say; others display fear when but a few months 
old. The emotion of fear is a stranger to some 
children until a serious accident has happened 
to them or their friends, and then they become 
very timid. Some fear animals, others ghosts, 
others burglars, others thunder and lightning, 
others father and mother, others a steam engine, 
a bridge, water, death, a gun, ridicule, darkness, 
etc. One colored girl reports to a friend of mine 
that she fears nothing except a feather! Each 
of the emotions afford abundant data in similar 
variety. They all throw a flood of light upon the 
course to be pursued in the care and management 
of the child. 

You are referred to works more advanced for 
a full discussion of the various classes of emotions. 
Emotions mayget theircharacteristics from the re- 



THE FEELINGS. HI 

lation of the experience to the present time; those 
arising from a present experience may be called 
immediate; from recalling a past experience, retro- 
spective; from looking forward to a future experi- 
ence, prospective. They may get their general 
characteristics from the objects awakening them, 
as personal and impersonal. The personal emo- 
tions include the social, moral, and religious emo- 
tions; the impersonal include the intellectual and 
aesthetic. Some of these will be treated in inde- 
pendent chapters. 

The third great class of feelings is the affec- 
tions, or the loves and likes. Affections are to be 
distinguished from the two preceding classes in 
that they are feelings which result from the new 
adjustment of the self toward objects which have 
produced pleasing sensations or emotions. The 
self naturally goes out in a kindly flow of feeling 
toward that which produces either. Emotions and 
sensations are not thus projected. Love must have 
an object. Likes and loves are always pleasurable, 
reacting upon the self and intensifying the pleas- 
ure of the emotions of which they may be regarded 
as the overflow. Dislikes and hates are the result 
of painful sensations and emotions, and the flow 
of feelings is away from rather than toward that 
which causes them. Likes and loves identify the 
self and the object in interest. Dislikes and hates 
hold them apart. Likes and loves wish well and 
take pleasure in the well-being of their objects as 
they do of themselves. Dislikes and hates wish ill 
and take pleasure in the misfortunes of their ob- 
jects — persons or things. 



112 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Children respond in loves and likes with sur- 
prising promptness. They very early show a pref- 
erence for the nurse who handles them so tender- 
ly and hums to them so softly, as well as for the 
food that gratifies their palate and allays their 
hunger. Many a mother has found it extremely 
difficult to displace a nurse in the affections of 
her child, because the bias had already been given 
before she was able to give him her attention. In 
a similar way she finds it almost impossible to get 
him to eat a different kind of food from that which 
he has already learned to like. Subterfuges and 
imitations with no end of coaxing are necessary 
in many cases to overcome antipathy for other 
foods. A few sticks of candy, a merry romp, a 
buggy ride, a kind word in time of need, will, as 
any one knows, quickly kindle a child's love for 
the giver. That children's affections are very 
fickle and are easily transferred is probably due 
as much to lack of memory in the new pleasure 
as to anything else. Where the kindly treatment 
has been of long continuance, however, the affec- 
tion even in very young children is not so easily 
disturbed as many people imagine. 

If you will make inquiries concerning the chil- 
dren in your circle, you will find many interest- 
ing facts pertaining to the origin, development, 
and extinction of likes and loves. You will see 
on what slight provocation an affection may spring 
up and how intense it may be for a few days or 
weeks, and then how suddenly it may disappear. 
In some cases the cause of the affection may be 
discovered at once, and in others no special reason 



THE FEELINGS. 113 

may show itself. Be sure to note the things which 
most easily arouse the affections of children, and 
what changes take place in their preferences as 
they grow older. Some children will be found 
to possess little or no affection in the true sense 
of the word, while others respond generously to 
every force that touches them kindly. 

Loves may be classified according to their ob- 
jects, as love of kindred, love of friends, love of 
home, love of country, love of society, love of prop- 
erty, love of power, love of action, love of knowl- 
edge, love of truth, etc., each having a variety of 
subdivisions which may readily be discovered by 
you. The undue preponderance of one of these or 
the absence of any one of them in a child should 
raise at once an inquiry concerning its cause. 

The fourth class of feelings is called desires. 
Your investigations have shown you that the chil- 
dren not only love that which contributes to their 
pleasure and happiness, but that an impulse to 
possession, to the assurance of the continuance of 
that object in its present relations to them, is also 
usually present in some degree. 

Such an impulse is called a desire. Love re- 
sponds more or less blindly to its stimulus, which 
is also true of desires in the earlier stages of the 
child's life. Then its impulsive character is more 
prominent; but later its object is selected with 
some discrimination, and its intellectual side ap- 
pears. On account of the close relationship of 
the desires and affections, the classes of both are 
practically the same. Appetites are physical de- 
sires. Desires are satisfied in the sensation or 
11 



114 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

emotion which their gratification begets. By ex- 
perience the child learns what objects or classes 
of objects produce certain sensations and emotions, 
and he very early begins the regulation of his de- 
sires in accordance with that knowledge. Such 
regulation is naturally directed to physical desires 
first, and next to those of a higher order. Desires 
whose gratification produce pain, or less pleasure 
than others, are repressed, or subordinated to those 
whose satisfaction insures him greater enjoyment. 
He suppresses a desire for the time being, that its 
gratification may be more complete in the future. 
Gradually physical desires and those relating to 
the self alone become subordinated to the moral 
desires and to those affecting the pleasure and 
happiness of his fellows. This process of organiz- 
ing the desires and its reactive effect on the char- 
acter of the child will be treated further in the 
chapter on the Will. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

THE WILL AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 

MoTOE control has already been explained. 
The physical impulse furnishes the motive power 
for all muscular activity. As there is no motion 
in the steam engine without steam, so there is no 
motion in the body without the impulse. As the 
engineer directs the steam in the engine, so the 
intellect guides the power arising in the impulse 
to the execution of certain specific movements. 
These two elements, physical impulse and intel- 
lect, constitute the will in all voluntary bodily 
activity. 

Will is simply the self originating and direct- 
ing its own activities. The initiatory movement 
is always found in impulse; the selecting and di- 
recting, in the intellect. The intellect fixes upon 
some end to reach, some particular movement to 
execute, some work to perform, and regulates the 
motive power of the impulse in such a way as to 
accomplish it effectively. 

The body is under control when it responds 
easily and promptly to the demands which the in- 
tellect makes upon it. This concrete will action, 
which begins in a very simple way with the child, 
gradually organizes and brings under control the 

115 



116 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

entire locomotive machinery of the body, includ- 
ing impulses and the muscular and nervous sys- 
tems. While he is thus gaining control of his 
physical powers, his mental impulses are also slow- 
ly rising into consciousness and re-enforcing the 
physical impulses. The latter differentiate into 
well-defined appetites or physical desires, while the 
former as clearly objectify and become distinct 
mental desires. So largely are bodily and mental 
activities moving together in the earlier years of 
the child's life that the control of the former 
means practically also the control of the latter. 
His mental life differentiates from his physical 
life very slowly. Each serves and strengthens the 
other as the former is attaining that high posi- 
tion in which it alone is to be master. In the 
process physical appetites and desires gradually 
become subordinated to mental desires, and pru- 
dential and moral control begin to define. 

Desires are impulses directed toward objects 
which it is thought will give pleasure or profit. 
Impulses, as pure felt pressure, are not consciously 
directed toward any object or class of objects. 
Through experience the child recognizes in a gen- 
eral way at least the character of the impulse, and 
recalls objects which once satisfied it. Naturally 
he sets them up for consideration, and the impel- 
lent force carries him toward one, then toward an- 
other, possibly toward all, often producing puz- 
zling confusion. This is what is called conflict or 
clash of impulses or desires. The child determines 
the question of preference by estimating the vary- 
ing abilities of the different objects to satisfy the 



THE WILL AND ITS FUNCTIONS. HY 

generic impulse out of which the desires have 
risen. He selects that one which in his judgment 
possesses the greatest power, and all of the impel- 
lent forces press toward it, the different impulses 
and desires yielding at once to that one which was 
in the line of the choice just made. Many things 
affect the estimate and the choice; the child's for- 
mer experiences, his education, his environments, 
his needs, the advice of others, etc. 

The choice once made, the desire is re-enforced 
by the new impulse resulting from the conscious 
possibility of satisfaction, and thus motive power 
for its realization is supplied. In all the move- 
ment thus far feeling and intellect have been re- 
acting upon each other for the purpose of fixing 
definitely upon the end to be attained and in clear- 
ing the deck for action. These things being done, 
it now remains for the mind to select the means 
by which the end is to be realized. The factors 
that control the selection of ends also control the 
selection of means. Suppose the desire be for a 
drink: a glass of water being near, the impulse 
is directed through the muscles of the arm for 
bringing the glass to the mouth. If it be to di- 
vide an apple, the impulse, under similar direction 
in each case, moves the hand to the pocket for a 
knife, both hands open it, and both are used in 
performing the operation. If it be to utter a cer- 
tain word, the impulse is directed through the ap- 
propriate muscles. This final executive act of the 
will is called volition. 

The above analysis shows that there are two 
clearly defined functions of the will: they are the 



118 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

idealizing and realizing functions. The will sets 
lip the ends to be attained, and proceeds to attain 
them also. In the above illustrations, as in all 
motor control, the realizing function is dependent 
upon the readiness with which the physical or- 
ganism responds to the directive force of the mind. 
The object of manual training in all its branches 
is to develop such perfect harmony or action be- 
tween the idealizing and realizing activities or 
functions of the will that little or no attention 
need be given to the latter. As skill in any 
is to develop such perfect harmony of action be- 
comes so nearly automatic that muscular effort is 
practically reduced to nothing. The mind is thus 
left free to attend to the formation and retention 
of the ideal which is realizing. The tool of the 
expert graver and the nimble fingers of the mod- 
eler alike work out unerringly the invisible lines 
which the mind busily runs for them. 

The physical organism, however, is not the 
only part of himself which the child must con- 
trol. Attention, as explained in a former chapter, 
is not the concentration of muscular or nervous 
energy, but of the mental activities. Every volun- 
tary act of the mind is just as much an act of the 
will as is every voluntary physical movement. 
Notion building, judgment, recollection, thinking, 
etc., are possible only to him who controls these 
activities as fully as he controls the various mus- 
cles of the body. It requires an act of the will to 
distinguish between a pen and its holder, to put 
a dog and his collar together in a mental picture, 
to determine that one orange is larger than an- 



THE WILL AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 119 

other, to rebuild the picture of a bird seen yester- 
day, to discover the cause of the withering of the 
rose in the vase on the table, to get the meaning 
of the line — 

Kind hearts are more than coronets. 

Mental impulses and desires are suppressed, 
subordinated, and organized in the same manner 
as the physical, and the process needs little further 
explanation. One of the principal things to re- 
member is that time and practice are required in 
both cases. It is the function of physical and 
manual training to develop and perfect control 
and skill in every bodily organ. It is the function 
of education on the mental side to accomplish 
the same thing for the mental activities. Freedom 
in the use of the latter is Just as essential as in the 
use of the former. The child needs to be trained 
so that he can do more than simply turn his at- 
tention to a subject to the exclusion of others. He 
must attain to that power which will enable him 
to bring at once to its comprehension and solu- 
tion the whole of himself, his past knowledge, his 
past experiences, his accumulated strength. 

Control as related to the will and as thus far 
considered merely places the child in possession 
of himself as he may wish to serve immediate ends. 
He is now, as it were, familiar with his tools, and 
knows how to use them. A little inquiry, how- 
ever, will show that another class of ends has been 
building up out of his experience. The mastery 
of his physical powers is to serve a higher purpose 
than the immediate gratification of his impulses. 



120 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the awakening of pleasurable sensations and emo- 
tions. The skillful use of his mental faculties 
has a higher mission than the mere satisfaction 
which comes from their exercise. The economic 
value of both has already been suggested. Con- 
trol saves energy and time. It insures definiteness 
and accuracy. It multiplies vastly the amount of 
work which may be accomplished. Learning from 
his experiences, the child sees not only that one 
object or action may serve him better than an- 
other, but that one of two or three or many may 
in the end bring him all of the profit and enjoy- 
ment that all the others could have brought. In 
other words, he learns not only the way to accom- 
plish a certain end with the least expenditure of 
mental and physical force, but he learns also to 
select an end which will be the most fruitful in 
results. 

Control thus keeps advantage constantly in 
view. It makes one end serve as a means to an- 
other. It denies itself present gratification for 
future gratification and profit; or, better, it finds 
present enjoyment in the anticipation of a future 
enjoyment which it sets machinery in motion to 
insure. Control organizes itself upon a prudential 
basis. Everything that the child or the man does 
is determined beforehand by weighing its advan- 
tage or disadvantage. '" He buttons up his coat 
collar to keep from getting a sore throat; he saves 
his pennies that he may buy a ball; he learns his 
letters that he may be able to read; he is a good 
boy that he may win his mother's approbation; he 
exercises that he may grow strong; he talks re- 



THE WILL AND ITS FUNCTIONS 121 

spectfully to a larger boy that he may not catch a 
threshing; he carries in a large boxful of wood 
in the afternoon that he may not be compelled 
to go out in the dark after more; he treats his 
playmates kindly that they may love him; he sows 
that he may reap. In all of this he gradually 
learns how one thing depends upon others, and 
organizes all these means so that they mutually 
contribute toward higher or more far-reaching ad- 
vantage. He becomes somewhat of a business 
man, working for pay, making or raising things 
to sell, buying and selling, studying the laws of 
production and of trade, developing insight, cau- 
tion, self-denial, confidence. 

The discussion thus far has probably made will 
and control sufficiently clear to guide you more 
fully in your observations with the children. Veri- 
fy each of the statements concerning the origin 
and growth of the will. Discover how largely 
the younger children are creatures of impulse, and 
what forces are each day conspiring to their con- 
trol. What is the connection of the feelings in 
general with the various kinds of control? If 
any of the children have " weak wills," what is 
the cause ? Why do some children have good phys- 
ical and intellectual control and yet lack pru- 
dence? Why do others possess the latter and lack 
the others? How much may be attributed to poor 
health or to home government? How much of 
the control is due to outside pressure as the in- 
centive of some reward or the fear of punishment? 
How much is due to the child's own desire and 
ability to realize the ideals for himself? What 



122 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

physical obstacles seem to be in the way? How 
far is the control natural and spontaneous? Why 
are some children so far behind others? Are any 
of them possessed of evil spirits, or do they sim- 
ply need some loving, sympathetic, painstaking 
friend to assist them in their efforts at getting 
control of themselves? 

This last question suggests the relationship 
which wills bear to one another. They are always 
affecting one another for better or for worse. The 
far-reaching influence of a child's playmates, 
though unconsciously directed, is known to every- 
body. The educational process as a whole is well 
defined as the influencing of one will hy another in 
a more or less methodical way in order to assist it 
to an ideal development. The education of the will, 
the development of control in its many-sided 
senses, is the real end and aim of all educatiou. 
The will of the child may be influenced in a purely 
infectious way or by intelligent counsel and as- 
sistance. It can not be accomplished by a few 
spasmodic efEorts from time to time, but only by 
that same slow and regular process by which Na- 
ture produces all of her rarest creations. 

In the attainment of control the same law 
holds as in all other mental activity. Each effort 
reacts upon the child, making him stronger for 
the succeeding experience. The gain each time 
may be imperceptible, but at the end of a series 
will manifest itself clearly enough. In that way 
he goes on from strength to strength, choosing 
more intelligently, more promptly, more accurate- 
ly; executing more easily, more skillfully, more 



THE WILL AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 123 

effectively; becoming more resourceful, more de- 
liberate, more self-reliant. The reaction upon the 
self affects all sides of the child's emotional na- 
ture, and gives that balance and poise to the char- 
acter which insures self-possession and intelligent 
action even under unexpected and trying diffi- 
culties. 

Will reaches its highest function in moral con- 
trol — that is, control of the self in accord with an 
ideal of right. Pure advantage as a motive here 
yields to a higher desire — that of right doing. 
Some children very early distinguish between 
right and wrong; others long confuse the idea of 
advantage with that of right. They are apt to 
think that whatever gives them or gives their 
friends pleasure is right, and that whatever gives 
them pain is wrong. All are moved quickly by 
the incentive of advantage, particularly if the ad- 
vantage is immediate, but the incentive to be true 
affects many of them very slowly. The child nat- 
urally ttiinks more about getting and having than 
about doing and being. The general movement by 
which moral control is obtained is the same as that 
just explained in prudential control. Its further 
discussion will be found in the chapter on Manners 
and Morals. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. — PEECEP- 
TION, MEMOEY, AND IMAGINATION. 

Consciousness, apperception, and attention 
have been defined and explained. They are gen- 
eral functions of the intellect, entering as they do 
more or less into all mental activity. It remains 
to examine the special functions of perception, 
memory, imagination, conception, judgment, and 
reasoning. The treatment of each must necessarily 
be brief. 

Perception is the act of getting knowledge of 
individual objects present to the senses. It is the 
initial stage in all apperception. It tells us sim- 
ply what a thing is as present before us; gives us 
its form, color, texture, material, weight, surface, 
parts, movements — summing all up in a mental 
picture whose wider relations and fuller meanings 
are discovered by apperception proper or by com- 
parison and reasoning. An object is lying by 
my paper as I write. Through perception I dis- 
cover a handle, its shape, and the material out of 
which it is made; a long blade is attached at one 
end and two small blades at the other. Though 
I may not know its name, I have the picture of 
a knife clearly defined in my mind. The knowl- 
124 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 125 

edge of any or of all of the parts together is called 
perception, and yet you readily see that more or 
less of my past experience has gone into the 
building up of the picture and given it the mean- 
ing it now possesses; in so far as this is true, there 
is a suggestion of apperception — that is, a percep- 
tion to which has been added a meaning greater 
than that which lies in the object unrelated to any 
past experience. A second look at the knife shows 
me that it is mine; that it is a valuable knife; 
that it is of modern make; that it is fit for cer- 
tain kinds of work only; all this and much more 
is apperceived. I once saw a lady alight from 
a train and fall into the arms of a company 
awaiting her. All were in tears and were dressed 
in deep black. Perception gave me this knowl- 
edge. Apperception told me that there were sor- 
row and mourning and death and broken hearts 
and vacant chairs. On the wall is a small paint- 
ing. Through perception I get the form of a 
house, of leafless trees, of broken fences, of alter- 
nations of dark and light colors stretching away 
over and beyond the house, of a round white spot 
above, of blotches of white paint covering the 
roof of the house and hiding the earth from view. 
Through apperception I know that it is winter, 
that it is midnight and cold and lonely and deso- 
late. Perception, in a word, tells us what things 
present are and apperception tells what they mean. 
The educated and the uneducated perceive things 
about alike, but the educated and the experi- 
enced apperceive far more in everything they meet 
than the others. 



126 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

The laws of association and dissociation apply 
to perception as well as to apperception. Percep- 
tion locates objects in time and space, giving them 
relations to one another and to the self. The 
process of distinguishing objects from one another 
and of noting the various elements that compose 
them and the characteristics peculiar to them, to- 
gether with their resemblances, is of the utmost 
importance in the child's life. Its value in the 
intellectual life depends primarily upon its ac- 
curacy and, secondarily, upon its rapidity and 
many-sidedness. Sluggishness of action and nar- 
rowness of vision must ever debar the child from 
attaining to a wide knowledge of things. The 
mental side of all knowledge gained directly 
through the senses is perception, and much of the 
discussion concerning their functions and their 
culture should be reviewed here. 

To show how apperception affects perception, 
several figures, some of them reproductions, are 
given on the opposite page. They will be found 
valuable as well as entertaining in experimenting 
with the children. As soon as the children find 
themselves deceived in the figures they will be- 
come very wary, and proceed with such caution 
that many of them can not readily be misled 
again. Notice the particular temperaments most 
generally making mistakes. Take now several 
small wooden balls or cubes of varying sizes, two 
or three of each being of the same size, and test 
the children's ability to distinguish among them. 
Some of the smaller balls or cubes should be skill- 
fully loaded inside with shot, so as to be equal in 




Fig. 1. 

rnrrTTTm-rrrm 

a h c 

Fig. 2. 



Fig. 3 




V 




Fig. 5. 



Fig. 4. 



A 



A 



Fig. 6. 



Fig. 8. 



Fio. r. 



^' 



Fig. y. 




FiG. 10. 



/////////// 



7^ 



y ■//////// 



LJ. 



Fig. 11. 



vooooooc 



^^\ 



V 



Fig. 12. 



Fijj. 1. Is the diameter of the circle > or < than the side of the 
square? Fig. 2. Which is longer, ah or h c% Fig. 3. Which of the 
rectangles is the longer? Fig. 4. Which horizontal diameter is the 
greater? Fig. 5. Which is the longer, ah or h e% Fig. 6. Which is 
the greater distance, ah or cd% Fig. 7. Is the line c d or the line c e 
parallel to a & ? Figs. 8 and 9. Which is the longer, ah oxhc% Fig. 
10. Which is the longer, a or c ? Does the book, J, open toward or 
from you? Fig. 11. Which is the longer, ah or bd,% Fig. 12. At 
which end do these lines converge ? 

If these figures are placed on the blackboard or transferred to 
chart paper, they can be used with excellent success before the 
classes. 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 127 

weight to the next larger size. See what effect 
the suggestiveness of size has upon the estimate 
of weight. Your own experience will suggest to 
you a number of tests serving a similar purpose. 

Memory is the act of recalling the picture of a 
past experience. The experience must come back 
approximately as it occurred, and the self must 
recognize it as having been an experience of its 
own in a certain more or less definite time and 
place. Its value depends also upon its accuracy, 
its rapidity, and its comprehensiveness. Without 
memory there could be no progress in knowledge- 
getting. However valuable the presentative ac- 
tivities already described may be, if memory be 
wanting their cultivation and development are im- 
possible. They reciprocally affect each other. 
Perception makes little advancement if memory is 
not following closely behind. 

As each experience helps to an understanding 
of the next, the place of memory is easily enough 
seen. This particular function is so important 
that the question naturally arises whether mem- 
ory ought to be made to serve any other purpose. 
If a past experience contains one or more elements 
similar to those of the present experience, the law 
of suggestion is usually potent enough to pro- 
voke its spontaneous recall and application to the 
new experience without any special effort of the 
mind. If you will watch the children at their 
plays, you will see how fully this law control's. 
Watch them at their house games, and see how 
much more readily many of them learn details 
than do their elders. See also how quickly an 

12 



128 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

experience in one line is used by the child to help 
him in understanding another when their similar- 
ity seems very slight even to you. Under such 
demands note how little repetition is necessary 
to enable many children to recall the aids that 
unlock the meaning to the new experience. Chil- 
dren seldom worry about remembering things. 
They remember them only as they creep into their 
consciousness by the laws already named. They 
do little feeling around in the past until they 
grow older or until the task is set before them. 
This great function of memory being so evident, 
the advantage of certain lines of sequence in the 
everyday experiences of the child needs no fur- 
ther argument. Art is thus made possible. 

But memory serves another great purpose in 
furnishing to the self its past experiences in order 
that it may reason about them and discover the 
principles and laws involved in them, their like- 
nesses and differences, their nature and value. 
You have noticed how difficult it is for some chil- 
dren to see the similarity or dissimilarity of two 
things you are talking about, particularly as they 
are compelled to hold one of them in the memory. 
The vagueness of details in the memory picture 
and its disposition to slip away entirely were con- 
stantly defeating you. Induction and deduction 
are both impossible without memory. The more 
readily a child recalls experiences having common 
elements, the more accurately and the more rapid- 
ly does he discover a body of laws and principles. 
Such discoveries react upon the mind, multiply- 
ing with wonderful rapidity the child's power of 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 129 

retention and recollection. Science and philoso- 
phy are thus assured. 

Memory also serves a great end in a prudential 
way. Half of the misfortunes of childhood come 
because the child forgets what he has experienced 
or what has been told him. Out of memory cau- 
tion quickly develops and control becomes pos- 
sible. The memory of yesterday's bumping pre- 
vents another tumble downstairs to-day; of this 
morning's sting, the handling of another waspj 
of father's displeasure, the loss of the hatchet; of 
last night's sore throat, exposure to cold. Not 
always promptly, nor with all children, do these 
results follow, but sooner or later they come and 
grow into a system with untold benefits to the in- 
dividual and to society. 

The pleasures of memory are not excelled by 
those of the imagination, of which poets so pro- 
fusely sing. Childhood hours — mother's lullaby, 
the fragrance of the apple blossoms, the songs of 
the robin, the stories round the old hearthstone, 
the Thanksgiving dinner, the midnight visit of 
Kris Kringle, the little red schoolhouse in the 
neck of the woods, the jingle of sleigh bells, the 
thrill of love's first dream, the visit to Aunt 
Mary's, the old singing school, the old oaken 
bucket, the cows winding slowly o'er the lea, the 
night when troth was plighted, the day when we 
first entered a home of our own — are but a 
few of the multitude of beautiful visions which 
ever and anon drive out the care of to-day and 
fill the soul with happiness. Even the sorrows 
and struggles of the past have a halo about them 



130 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

that makes their remembrance dear to every 
heart. 

In efforts at expressing thought by symbols, 
particularly by language, memory serves another 
great function. Facts, events, dates, names, 
places, persons, forms, colors, movements, princi- 
ples, laws, must be recalled in an orderly way that 
the mind may carry on a connected line of 
thought; words with which to express the idea 
appropriately must also reappear at the exact time 
needed. Happy is the child to whom all these 
come spontaneously. But, generally speaking, 
special effort is ncc-cssary for their recall, and 
memory takes the form of recollection. 

Recollection is memory under control and direc- 
tion of the will. By utilizing the laws of associa- 
tion and suggestion, the will rebuilds a former 
experience, slowly or rapidly as the degree of fa- 
miliarity may permit. By this it must not be 
understood that memory proper, as spontaneous, 
reproduces a past experience without any mental 
effort whatever, but simply that such effort is re- 
duced to a minimum. Every mental state is an 
activity, as has been explained, memory not ex- 
cepted. In recollection will and effort come into 
prominence in consciousness as factors. Ability 
to recall a part or all of an experience at will is 
invaluable in any occupation or profession the 
youth may enter. 

Discover whether your children are recalling 
spontaneously or with evident effort; how many 
remember places better than names, facts better 
than principles; what they see better than what 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 131 

they hear; what interests them better than what 
does not; what is recent as compared with what 
is remote; what they understand as compared 
with what they do not. Find out what effect phys- 
ical depression or fear has upon memory; whether 
they remember names better than dates, and the 
cause of it; Avhat is the effect of repetition. Do 
they remember poetry better than prose? If so, 
why? Find out also whether you are not making 
life a burden to them in requiring them to " com- 
mit to memory " many things that would remain 
with them with little effort if given later on, and 
whether there are not many things which they 
could easily appropriate now that you are with- 
holding for the future. 

If your inquiries are pursued far enough, you 
will have material sufficient to keep you thinking 
for a long time. Your conclusions will prove 
about as follows: 

The more clearly a child understands a sub- 
ject, 

The more it affects his personal interests and 
needs, 

The more vivid the original impression, 

The more definitely it is related to his other 
knowledge, 

The more carefully the natural sequence is 
followed in approaching it. 

The less will be the effort necessary for its 
recall. Eepetition and Avriting as memory aids 
will probably take a subordinate place in your 
methods, though not losing their value entirely. 
Correct habits in knowledge-getting will seem 



132 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

more desirable than a great amoimt of knowledge 
itself. 

Imagination is the third great notion or pic- 
ture-forming activity of the intellect. Its function 
is to embody the ideal in concrete forms. Percep- 
tion gives us the idea of an object. Imagination 
reverses the process. It starts with the idea and 
expresses it in some individual form. It is cre- 
ative. It produces new forms. These may be con- 
structed in a mere mechanical way, with little or 
no definite purpose in view, or in accord with the 
highest ideals of the human soul. In their origin 
they may be almost exclusively emotional or as 
exclusively intellectual. They range all the way 
from the laying of a few sticks together in a cer- 
tain way to the carving of the Apollo Belvidere; 
from the potato-masher to the linotype; from "Ba, 
ba, black sheep " to the book of Job; from the 
rude hut to the towering cathedral; from the crude 
sketches of the simple-minded peasant to the 
noble frescoes of the Vatican. Out of imagina- 
tion rises the beautiful world of art, inspiring and 
refining the race. It touches every side of life, 
and makes progress possible. 

In its simpler and more mechanical form the 
imagination is largely inventive, the end being to 
construct something rather than to express or em- 
body an idea, or even to produce something to 
serve a specific purpose. Children will often labor 
for hours to build a mud dam or a block house, 
and then destroy it in an instant without the 
shadow of compunction. Their plays constantly 
call into requisition their imaginative powers, and 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 133 

the marvelous freedom with which they make, 
destroy, burn, kill, fly, die, come to life again, be- 
come rich, lose all their i^roperty, sail to the moon, 
administer medicine, become grandmothers, sol- 
diers, sailors, merchants, showmen, monkeys, dogs, 
cats, horses, bears, sheep, fairies, griffins, cow- 
boys, ghosts, or angels — all in imagination — is well 
known to everybody. There is just as much art 
in all this as there is in the pictures the child 
draws or the models he makes from clay. This 
process of modifying the things he is, the things 
he has, and the things he sees and hears, but fore- 
casts what he will be doing in youth and man- 
hood. The greater the skill which he attains in 
putting his experiences into new forms and in de- 
vising ways and means of doing things, the better 
will be his preparation for active life. 

Eead or tell a story to the children, and dis- 
cover the differences in the pictures which they 
form of it. Some will note every detail, others 
scarcely any. Ask them to tell an original story 
or act an original part, and note the differences 
among them. Give half of the girls dolls and the 
other half scraps of ribbons and dress goods; give 
half of the boys water-color paints and brushes 
and the other half sand pans; keep busy yourself, 
but watch them and see what they do. Give them 
curiovis toys, and discover who will find out first 
how to play with them. Give them all simple puz- 
zles and see who will find their way out first. 
Show them pictures and give all a chance to tell 
what they see in them. Give them rings, colored 
sticks, colored beads, colored strips of paper, pen- 



134 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

cils, soft clay, needles and thread, etc., and see 
what they make out of them. Note particularly 
who are original and who follow others. Find 
where all get their ideas for the new forms. Which 
are more imaginative, boys or girls? Note also 
who seem to take more pleasure in color than in 
form pictures. The study will have special value 
if you discover the causes of the differences among 
the children, and note the influence which a little 
suggestion from you may have. 

The inquiries just suggested are intended more 
for the smaller children, but you will readily de- 
vise methods for making appropriate tests with 
older children. Compare the memoranda and dis- 
cover how the imagination in the different ages 
varies. New themes now interest them. Images 
form more rapidly. Delicacy and fineness begin 
to characterize them. They bear the stamp of 
individuality. Ornamentation in some cases and 
utility in others show the trend of emotion or 
thought. Have them read The Building of the 
Ship, The Village Blacksmith, Maud Muller, Snow 
Bound, and tell you the stories in their own lan- 
guage. Ask them to describe a certain landscape, 
yesterday's thunderstorm, the old mill, and note 
the plainness of some and the rich coloring of 
others. You will find some extremely practical, 
others visionary and fanciful; some resourceful, 
others wholly lacking in originality and creative 
power. 

In its highest sense as creative, imagination 
seeks to produce forms that Avill symbolize uni- 
versal ideas, with little sensuous material to ex- 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 135 

press great truths. Its test is its weight of mean- 
ing; its themes, the deepest emotions of the 
human heart. As the youth begins to think and 
to feel deeply, he begins to catch the deeper mean- 
ings of the creations of Nature and of art, and 
to long to express them himself. Lack of space 
forbids elaboration, but the development of the 
child's imagination from the purely mechanical 
to fancy and to the higher forms of creative activ- 
ity is one of the most fruitful themes for inquiry 
and study. 

Perception, apperception, and memory de- 
pend much upon imagination for the filling out 
of the details in the mental pictures they form. 
It is sometimes so active that the child is self- 
deceived, for it covers up the real elements in an 
object with the wealth of associated elements 
which it immediately images. Memory pictures 
are often most unreliable for the same reason and 
because of the inability of the child to distinguish 
between the old and the new elements present. 
On this account children are often punished for 
falsehoods for which they are not responsible, or 
at most not wholly to blame. 

An imagination that simply understands and 
appreciates what another constructs is sometimes 
called passive. That which constructs is called 
active. The terms may help to a distinction, but 
it is easily seen that all imagination is active; that 
however suggestive and complete the creation of 
another may be, it is still necessary for the receiv- 
ing mind to construct its own picture in order to 
get its meaning. The greatest painting in the 



136 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

world is but a varicolored canvas to him who 
knows not how to give it relief and life. Even 
Home, Sweet Home has scarcely more than rhythm 
to him who as he reads can not construct the pic- 
tures of the palaces and their gay throngs, the 
thatched cottages and the humble hearth-stones, 
the caroling birds and the lonely exile. 

Like the other picture-forming activities, im- 
agination everywhere obeys the laws of association 
and suggestion, often responding to the slightest 
stimulus, constructing and building, combining 
and recombining, " turning even airy nothingness 
to forms and shapes " of beauty and of use. It is 
to this rare faculty that we owe the wealth of fig- 
ures that illuminate and vivify the world of litera- 
ture. 

The cultivation, direction, and control of the 
imagination of the child demand understanding 
and skill of the highest order. Into its upbuilding 
flows every current of his mental life. Upon its 
genius every ideal and every destiny depend. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS (CONTINUED). 
— CONCEPTION, JUDGMENT, EEASONING. 

Evert act of the mind is more or less com- 
plex, calling into exercise as it does a variety of 
activities. Its name depends upon the activity 
most prominent in consciousness. Imagination is 
dependent upon memory for its materials, mem- 
ory upon perception, perception upon sensation. 
In certain measure, also, the reverse is true, as 
has been explained. Apperception involves them 
all. The additional general intellectual processes 
named are conception, judgment, and reasoning. 

Formerly the term conception had a twofold 
signification. It was used as synonymous with per- 
ception, or individual notion, and also as signify- 
ing the notion of a class. It is now fast losing the 
former meaning and is being used in the latter 
sense. It will be used here as applied to mental 
pictures as general notions only. Notions of 
classes are built up by analysis and synthesis much 
in the same way as notions of individual objects. 
As an illustration, a child meets for the first time 
a few dozen apples of different varieties. He ex- 
amines one and finds it nearly spherical, with a 
positive indentation and a stem at one end and a 

137 



138 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

slight depression with rudiments of leaves at the 
other. He notes the covering, the difference in 
the outside and the inner part of the flesh, the 
kinds of seeds and seed cases, the texture and 
taste. He examines another, and a score of them, 
and discovers that in all these things they prac- 
tically agree. Some are larger than others; some 
are tart, some sweet, some mealy, some soft, others 
hard. They vary in color and a little in gen- 
eral shape, hut the points of likeness recur so 
often and are so clearly marked that they enter 
into the notion or mental picture of the class 
apple as a whole. He recognizes objects as apples 
only as they possess those characteristics. A large 
number of green leaves are examined. Each leaf 
is found to be flat, to possess a midrib with 
branches and a network of veins, to be composed 
of a pulpy cellular center, to have a stem on which 
it rises from the twig, though varying greatly in 
form, in margin, in thickness, and in special char- 
acter of venation. The common or like elements 
are united into a mental picture of leaves in gen- 
eral — a picture which any ordinary leaf will fit. 
If you were to mold a leaf out of clay, or cut one 
out of paper, or draw a picture of one, in all cases 
you would make it more or less in accord with this 
general notion or picture. What is true of the 
apple or leaf is also true of the triangle, or square, 
or sphere, or fish, or star, or house, or wagon, or 
flower. 

For the above reasons a conception may be de- 
fined as an image which symbolizes the general pro- 
cesses by which all the individual members of the 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 139 

class to which it helongs are constructed. The con- 
ception of a triangle is that of a jDolygon with 
three sides and three angles. With that image only 
in the mind, you may construct ten thousand tri- 
angles, no two being alike save in the requirement 
of the conception — three sides and three angles. 
Sometimes few, sometimes many elements enter 
into the conception to distinguish the class from 
other classes. In a simple way life is the only ele- 
ment that enters into the conception of animate 
objects to distinguish them from inanimate ob- 
jects; the spinal column to distinguish the class 
vertebrates from the invertebrates; solidity to dis- 
tinguish ice from water. It is true that in each 
case other characteristic elements may be implied, 
but they follow by virtue of the existence of the 
ones named. 

The analysis of the process just explained 
shows the following steps: 

1. Attention to one particular element found 
common to all the individuals of the class, as 
the sphericity in the apples, the midrib in the 
leaves, the three angles in the triangles, life in 
animate beings, etc. 

2. The comparison of the element as discov- 
ered in the individual members of the class and 
of other classes and the verification of identity 
and difference. 

3. The gradual separation or abstraction of 
that common element from the individuals in the 
class and its formation in the mind purely as an 
abstract mental image. 

4. The union or synthesis of the several ele- 



140 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ments found common to all the individuals in the 
class into one whole, making the conception 
proper. 

It must be apparent that the greater the care 
taken in verifying the common elements, and the 
greater the number of individuals examined, the 
more accurate and complete will be the concep- 
tion. 

The preceding paragraphs may be made clearer 
by taking some small cubes of different material 
and following up the steps through which you 
lead the children in helping them to form a con- 
ception of a cube. When you think they have a 
fair idea of it, put the cubes out of sight and give 
them some clay out of which to mold a cube. 
The definition of a concept will then mean much 
more to you. After helping them to a mental 
picture of a square, give them pencils to draw it, 
and what has been said will appear still plainer. 
Make a number of similar experiments; you will 
probably observe that what you are doing is very 
much like " teaching school," but that you have 
possibly been overlooking the importance of each 
step in the notion-building process. The investi- 
gation will show you that some children easily 
pick out the more important and characteristic 
common — that is, like — elements, while others 
note the more superficial and the more variable. 
As an illustration, one child will speak of the 
sphericity of the apples, while another will men- 
tion their color; one will note the rib and vena- 
tion structure of the leaf, while another will be 
absorbed in the outline of the margin. The con- 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 141 

sequence in the first case is that the fundamental 
likenesses are discovered and a correct concep- 
tion easily built up, while in the other the differ- 
ences are noted and an adequate notion is im- 
possible. 

All knowledge-getting, however simple or com- 
plex the process, results in conceptions — that is, in 
general notions. The process is a universalizing 
process — that is, the mind uses the individual to 
build the general idea. The meaning of every 
individual is to be found only in the common — 
the like — elements of the individuals of the class 
to which it belongs. That the child should be 
taught to form conceptions accurately, rapidly, 
and comprehensively needs then no urging. 

Judgment is the process of discovering and veri- 
fying the relations of things. It has been called the 
typical act of knowledge. The two great relations 
are those of identity and difference. These rela- 
tions may be of form, size, color, texture, move- 
ment, quality, quantity, time, space, part and 
whole, cause and effect, etc. Every sentence is a 
formal statement of a Judgment. The child says 
the apple is red. He means that the color agrees 
with his mental pictures of redness. He says that 
the knife is sharp, and means that its edge agrees 
with his notion of sharpness. He says that the 
dog runs fast, that the house is large, the time is 
long, the tree is far away, the stove is hot, the iron 
is heavy, the baby is crying, and ten thousand 
other things, for similar reasons. It was stated 
in the last paragraph that the knowledge-getting 
process is a universalizing process. Look now at 



112 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

eacli of the above sentences and see that the sub- 
ject is an individual object, and that the predicate 
— that which tells something about the subject — • 
is an abstract, universal notion or conception that 
had already been built up in the mind and with 
which it was familiar. The child simply finds and 
puts the individual object in the class where it 
belongs — the apple with the red things, the knife 
with the sharp things, the dog with the fast run- 
ners, the house with the large things, the time 
with the long things, the tree with the far-away 
things, etc. 

There are, then, in every judgment, as in every 
sentence, a perception and a conception; the for- 
mer expressed in the subject and the latter in the 
predicate. The former is the individual and the 
latter the universal. The judgment affirms their 
agreement or disagreement. Judgment, then, may 
be defined as finding the universal in the individ- 
ual. The accuracy of a judgment depends upon 
three things: (1) The accuracy of the perception, 
or individual notion; (2) the accuracy of the con- 
ception, or general notion; (3) the accuracy of 
the comparison upon which the idea of agreement 
or disagreement is based. Inaccuracy in any one 
of these may result in a wrong judgment. You 
see again how interdependent are all the knowl- 
edge-getting processes. If now you recall the fact 
that every mental picture of an object is made up 
of things learned about it, you will see that in 
reality each element in it is the result of a judg- 
ment. You will also see that every affirmative 
judgment you may make about an object gives 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 143 

you a new element to put into the mental pic- 
ture of it. What is true of the individual notion 
is also true of the general notion. Judgment, 
then, is also involved in all apperception. At first 
it appears in consciousness as a formal effort at 
discovering likeness and differences, but after- 
ward it is more or less absorbed in the ready ap- 
perception of the attributes of objects. It serves 
as a means of verifying apperception. Psycho- 
logically speaking, the test of a judgment is its 
harmony with the other related judgments already 
formed. 

In its earlier life the child seems to apprehend 
likeness and difference intuitively — that is, with- 
out any special effort at finding them. As already 
stated, the likeness thus discovered is usually 
rather of the superficial or the more attractive 
than of the fvmdamental order. It is only as he 
begins to find the less evident or the essential 
that formal judgment is called into requisition. 
Here you will discover the principal difference 
between the judgment of the child and of the 
man. A knowledge of essentials and of the more 
universal elements comes only with experience and 
education. A child's judgment is confined to nar- 
row limits and to few details. It deals almost 
exclusively with concrete objects. It is often 
scarcely more than impulse, but profits and grows 
wiser by experience. Test your children on their 
judgment of the lengths of several horizontal 
lines you draw on the blackboard; the heights of 
people not standing near together; the colors of 
ribbons shown them; the likenesses of oranges 

13 



144 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

and lemons, of leaves, of grains, of things very 
much unlike as well as very much alike. Not 
only will you discover how greatly they differ in 
their ability to judge, but also how greatly each 
child's judgment will vary in the different classes 
of objects presented to him. Find out, if pos- 
sible, the reason in each case. 

Judgment proper endeavors to find the rela- 
tions between two things, ideas, or objects by di- 
rect comparison. This process is sometimes called 
implicit reasoning, though judgment is certainly 
the better term. It often happens, however, that 
the comparison can not be directly made between 
two objects of thought, but that it can be made 
through the medium of a third. This process is 
based on the principle that things that are equal 
to or like a certain other thing must be equal to 
or like each other. If 3 and 1 equal 4, and 3 and 
2 equal 4, then 3 and 1 must equal 2 and 2. If 
a stick is one foot in length and a second stick is 
also one foot in length, the two sticks must be 
equal in length. If each of two pencils is like a 
third, they must be like each other. If cats have 
retractile claws, and this animal is a cat, it must 
have retractile claws. The process is still a process 
of finding likenesses, or a process of identification. 
It is more complex than judgment, because of the 
third or intermediate element used for connecting 
the other two. 

The reasoning process may then be defined as 
the operation of tlie intellect hy which the relations 
of certain things are found through the medium of 
others. Every reasoning process stated in a com- 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 145 

pact way takes the general form of the syllogism 
in which but three elements, or notions, enter. 
So, more definitely speaking, reasoning is simply 
finding the relation of two ideas through the medium 
of a third. Note that there are two notions in a 
judgment and three in a syllogism. The elements 
or terms of a judgment are notions; the elements 
of a syllogism are judgments, each judgment in 
a syllogism having two terms. Tlie following is 
the general form of the syllogism: 

1. y is X. 

2. z is y. 

8. . • , 2 is X. 

The part which y plays is easily seen. It sim- 
ply serves as a medium by which the relation of 
X and z is discovered. If investigation shows that 

1 is true and also that 2 is true, then 3 fol- 
lows of necessity. 1 is called the major premise, 

2 the minor, and 3 the conclusion; x is called 
the major term, z the minor, and y the middle. 
The middle term must be a universal or general 
notion in at least one of the premises. The major 
and minor terms must mean the same thing, no 
more, no less, in each place used. A concrete il- 
lustration will help to a clearer understanding of 
the syllogistic form: 

All plants have a circulating fluid called sap. 

This object is a plant. 

.-.This object has a circulating fluid called 
sap. 

Make other syllogisms of a similar character 
and see whether such a process is valid. 

The illustration just given is known as a de- 



146 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ductive syllogism. Deduction is the reasoning 
process which proceeds from a general principle to 
a particular fact. Its major premise is always 
some agreed or some proved principle. An ex- 
ample of the former is found in the following: 

A polygon having four eqnal sides and four 
right angles is called a square. 

This polygon has four equal sides and four 
right angles. 

. • . This polygon is a square. 

Induction is the reasoning process which pro- 
ceeds from individual facts to general principles 
and laws. Unless the major premise of the deduc- 
tive syllogism is agreed upon or is a definition, it 
must be established in some way as a basis for 
the argument. This is done by the inductive 
process just defined. The major premise in the 
first concrete syllogism was established in some 
such way as this: One plant after another was ex- 
amined until a large number, including almost 
every kind and variety, had been tested and each 
was found to contain a circulating fluid. What 
was found true of so many and under such a vari- 
ety of conditions was supposed to be true of all 
plants, and hence the general statement — 

All plants have a circulating fluid. 

The conclusion in the inductive process is 
based upon the general belief in the uniformity 
of nature. It holds that whatever is true of the 
representatives of a class under a sufficient num- 
ber of varying conditions may be accepted as 
true of all the members of the class, and conse- 
quently of the class as a whole. The facts in 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. X47 

inductive reasoning are drawn from our experi- 
ences. 

A child quickly learns to draw general con- 
clusions from his experiences. A hot stove or 
poker or lamp chimney or teakettle burns liLm, 
and he quickly decides that hot things burn. This 
gives him at once the major premise for the de- 
ductive syllogism: 

Hot things will burn me. 

This stove is hot. 

. • . This stove will burn me. 

In many cases children generalize and reach 
conclusions too quickly. Often one single ex- 
perience will prove sufficient to satisfy them. A 
child is snapped at by a dog, and he immediately 
concludes that all dogs will bite or snap at him. 
He is given bitter medicine in a spoon, and thinks 
that everything offered him in a spoon is bitter. 
A little friend of mine calls everybody nice who 
gives her candy. I have some large friends who 
do the same thing, however! As soon as the child 
thus generalizes about a class of objects, he makes 
the application very promptly to an individual 
case. My little girl was very shy of a stranger one 
morning, but when I told her that he was my 
friend she went to him at once, nestling down in 
his arms as though she had known him familiarly 
for years. At another time I picked her up at 
the head of the stairway and started downstairs 
with her head pointing below. She sprang up in- 
stantly, throwing her arms around my neck, ex- 
claiming, " Papa, you will let me fall ! " Though 
I assured her that her " dear papa would not let 



148 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

her fall," she replied, " Well, papa, that is the 
falling way, anyhow! " 

Proof is anything that convinces the mind of 
a fact or principle. It may come through observa- 
tion, experimentation, or reasoning. There can 
be no reliable reasoning which is not based upon 
accurate and many-sided observation and experi- 
mentation. As the mind of the child is satisfied 
with so little evidence, it is also easily moved to 
change its views, particularly if pleasure or ad- 
vantage appears. Henry's mother easily secured 
a promise from him that he would not play mar- 
bles for keeps, but when he saw that he was the 
best player at school he changed his mind about 
it. The child's reasoning must be in large meas- 
ure about concrete things, but the process needs 
no less careful training on this account. Transi- 
tion is not made at once to abstract reasoning. 
That comes gradually. Ability to comprehend the 
abstract comes only by long practice in compre- 
hending the concrete. Every effort to force the 
former will prove an injury to the child. 

There is a physiological side to reasoning as 
well as to perception. Brain cells are the ma- 
chinery by which the mind thinks. They are, like 
every other part of the body, developed and per- 
fected by intelligent exercise. Brain control 
comes much in the same way as muscular control. 
Nerve centers are built up, correlated, and made 
responsive to the varying and increasingly com- 
plex demands of the mind only in Nature's way 
and in Nature's time. Eecent investigations show 
that the nerve cells of the brain probably grow 



THE INTELLECT AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 149 

with mental activity by putting out branches that 
interlace more or less with each other, building 
up " apperception masses " that act together 
under appropriate stimuli, thus indefinitely multi- 
plying the mind's capacity for work. Everybody 
knows how hard it is to think when his " brain 
won't work." There is more philosophy in the 
statement, however, than everybody supposes. A 
brain that is accustomed to light thinking will 
no more think deeply than will the hands of a 
pianist accustomed to light and catchy music play 
at sight the highest creations of the masters. It 
is as difficult to train the uncultivated brain of an 
adult to think and to reason out great problems 
as it is to train the fingers of a full-grown man 
to become expert at the piano or the violin. If 
the mind of a Newton were placed in the head of 
a forester, it would be even more helpless from 
lack of a proper brain than would the mind and 
genius of Paderewski from lack of supple fingers if 
placed in the brain of a blacksmith. The educa- 
tion of the thinking and reasoning activities of 
the child, then, should not be postponed to the 
later years of his school life, but should conscien- 
tiously and intelligently accompany every stage in 
his development. When a child, he ought to be 
permitted to think and to reason as a child. He 
has plenty of things to think about and to raise 
questions about if he is exercising his senses as 
urged in the opening chapter. Stimulate inquiry 
and investigation, and his vision will be \vider 
and deeper with every rising sun. 

The first inquiries of the child are more about 



150 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

what things are. He soon, however, begins to 
raise questions about the causes of things. He 
wishes to know why things are so and so. These 
questions reveal to you the things about which 
he is probably able to reason. If you have become 
familiar with children's ways of seeing things, you 
will hardly fail to find the way to help them in 
their reasoning processes. First find out what 
they know about the class in general. If that, ap- 
plied to the inquiry, does not give the answer, 
guide them by experimentation and induction to 
discover the proper principle. Of course, there 
should be nothing formal or mechanical about 
the process. If every little detail were followed, 
interest would die at once. In ordinary reason- 
ing the full form of the syllogism is seldom 
thought out even by adults, much less by chil- 
dren.. By a single movement the middle term is 
seen to connect the other two, and their identifica- 
tion is at once announced. 

Eemember, again, that the end of all knowl- 
edge-getting is the building up of general or uni- 
versal notions, and that, as the object of a judg- 
ment is to add another element to the mental 
image already forming, so the reasoning process, 
though by a little longer route, serves the same 
purpose. 



CHAPTEK XVIII. 

THE SELF, HABIT, AND CHAKACTEE. 

The term self has been used frequently in the 
foregoing pages. It may now be more clearly ex- 
plained. By the self is meant the child, the man, 
as the subject from which conscious phenomena con- 
stantly rise. It is that which responds to the 
stimuli from the outside world; that which feels 
and thinks and wills. Its manifold activities con- 
stitute what is called mind. The self is distin- 
guished from them only as substance is distin- 
guished from its qualities or attributes. Essen- 
tially the self is as its attributes or activities. 
Knowing them, we know ourselves and other 
selves also. 

In speaking of the various mental activities, 
there is frequently a suggestion that they are more 
or less independent parts of the self, and that as 
one of them is acting the others are at rest. Mod- 
ern psychologists are agreed, however, that the 
self acts as a unit in all cases. If apperceiving, 
it is the whole self that apperceives; if recollect- 
ing, it is the whole self that recollects. The inter- 
dependence of all the intellectual activities is thus 
made more evident. 

Whatever the self does reacts upon it, giving it 

151 



152 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the power to do the same thing again with more 
ease and more rapidity than before. The more 
frequently the fingers perform certain movements, 
the more successfully do they perform each suc- 
ceeding movement. What is it that is stored up 
in the fingers as a result of each effort? Nothing 
but ability to do it again, possibly a little better 
and with a little less exertion. In the course of 
time the fingers become organized, as it were, to 
execute those particular movements, and their 
efficiency is thus greatly multiplied. In the same 
way the reaction of mental activity upon the self 
is constantly organizing it and increasing its power 
to act. In this way skill comes, and readiness, and 
comprehension. In this way also come tendencies 
and dispositions. Though the child be working 
objectively, thinking about things outside of him- 
self and making forms and colors to his fancy, 
he is really making himself. It is this that gives 
a child's environments, a child's companions, a 
child's books, and a child's plays such tremendous 
significance in character-building. The nature of 
mental food and mental exercise affects the nature 
of the mental organism far more profoundly than 
the nature of physical food and physical exercise 
affects the bodily organism. Read Hawthorne's 
Great Stone Face, and then verify what has been 
said by a study of the children in your circle. 

The study just suggested will possibly reveal 
some puzzling problems. Apparent contradic- 
tions of these statements may be found, but their 
explanation will usually appear in the hereditary 
dispositions or in the influences at first over- 



THE SELF, HABIT, AND CHARACTER. I53 

looked. Eead J. G. Holland's Social Undertow 
for further enlightenment. 

You have already seen that, as these activities 
organize into and become a part of the self, they 
become what is called hahit. At first they are 
more or less strange and unfamiliar, more or less 
difficult of execution. That which makes them 
familiar and easily executed also makes them a 
part of the self. Nothing is familiar which has 
not been converted into terms of the self. Under- 
standing and repetition are the two factors that 
best bring this about, though the latter often does 
it in a mechanical way. Hahit is defined as activ- 
ity resulting from the identification of an action 
with the self through repetition. When conditions 
similar to those originally accompanying an act 
occur, that act automatically — that is, without 
conscious effort — tends to repeat itself. This is 
in accord with the law of physical and mental 
activity that when any element of a series recurs, 
the whole series tends to recur also. The mo- 
mentum of habit thus carries an act on to com- 
pletion, leaving the mind free to give attention 
to any unfamiliar element present. For illustra- 
tion, when the child has learned to walk, he moves 
about the yard looking at the birds and talking 
about them to his little friends, all the while un- 
conscious of efforts at walking. He is watching 
the birds and is absorbed in them, and yet he is 
constantly talking to them or about them, words 
coming as needed, no effort now being required to 
recall them or to pronounce them. 

All education takes the form of habit. Noth- 



154 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ing is valuable as knowledge or skill that is not 
so fully possessed and assimilated with the self 
that it reacts spontaneously and directly to its ap- 
propriate stimulus. Habit makes apperception 
possible. Control is attained with habit. It ex- 
plains the marked differences among men in 
their ability to perform certain kinds of work. 
Ability is called skill, but it becomes skill only 
as it becomes habit. Both mental and phy- 
sical skill comes from practice that makes it hab- 
it. A man's strength or weakness lies in his 
habits of thinking and doing. His habits re- 
veal his character, or, better, his habits are his 
character. 

Activities that take the form of habit become 
permanent characteristics of the self as well as its 
controlling forces. From certain activities come 
all that brood of evil habits so common among 
people of all ages — laziness, shiftlessness, pro- 
crastination, listlessness, slovenliness, skepticism, 
faithlessness to promises, lying, instability, fault- 
finding, scolding, self-indulgence, etc. Most for- 
tunately also come from others the habits that 
make for righteousness — industry, thrift, punctu- 
ality, neatness, accuracy, interest, stability, self- 
denial, truthfulness, gentleness, courage, etc. 
These facts make it possible for the child to real- 
ize any ideal of character he may set up. They 
also show the part the teacher and parent may 
take in the process. 

Children easily form and easily break habits. 
Their imitative instincts serve them well. It is 
usually otherwise with adults. The second part 



THE SELF, HABIT, AND CHARACTER. 155 

of the first statement is disputed by many moth- 
ers. By sad experience they have learned how 
hard it is to break some bad habits into which 
their children fall. When, however, they have 
secured the co-operation of the children, the work 
is less difficult, so the statement is permitted to 
stand. It is admitted, though, that there may 
be some hopeless cases. A boy, a neighbor of 
mine, when but seven years of age gravely con- 
fided to his playmate the conclusion that he had 
chewed tobacco so long that it would be impos- 
sible for him to abstain from it! Another of still 
more tender years had formed such a habit of 
lying that correctives proved of no avail. Another 
fell to fighting nearly every boy he met. Prob- 
ably every household has its truant and its child 
that goes into spasms and turns "black and 
blue " whenever punished or denied anything it 
craves. 

Many of these so-called habits, however, are 
superficial, and mere temporary stages in the 
growth of the child. A little friendly counsel re- 
enforced by wise punishment, if necessary, usually 
corrects them. Dr. D. M. Harris, of St. Louis, tells 
me that he spent a few hours one afternoon and 
a short time on the following morning in show- 
ing a little girl how she could talk without stam- 
mering. She had stamm^ered so long that it was 
supposed to be a physical defect, and efforts at 
its cure had been abandoned. Imagine her moth- 
er's delight at the dinner table to hear her speak 
without any hesitation or defective enunciation 
whatever. Children often insist that they can 



156 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

not overcome certain bad habits that some re- 
minder will readily assist them in correcting. A 
friend of mine tells me that a little nephew of 
hers would swear like a trooper when angry. He 
agreed with his mother that it was very wicked, 
but he " got so mad." At the conclusion of a lov- 
ing talk with him one day about the habit, she 
tied a string around one of his fingers and secured 
a solemn promise that as long as that string was 
there he would not swear. Early in the after- 
noon of the day after he came rushing into the 
house, crying, " Mamma, mamma, cut this string 
off my finger quick! " She said, " Why, my 
boy?" "Oh," he replied, "I am mad at a boy 
out in the alley, and I must swear at him; cut it 
quick! " 

As has been remarked already, children's 
habits, whether good or bad, are easily formed; 
hence the danger of indulging them too frequently 
in certain cute expressions and willful pranks. 
The first " I won't do it! " often provokes a smile, 
but too often it is not long before it brings hot, 
scalding tears. Study the habits of your children^ 
and discover the circumstances under which they 
have risen. Why do some of them lounge con- 
stantly? Why do some walk with a light, elastic 
step and others in a shuffling way? Why do some 
chew their tongues when they write? Why are 
some tidy and neat and others dirty and slovenly? 
Why are some always losing things? Why are 
some invariably ahead of their fellows and others 
as surely behind them? Why are some always 
alert and attentive, and others diffident and 



THE SELF, HABIT, AND CHARACTER. 157 

listless? Why are some constantly complaining 
and grumbling? Why do some always speak 
in a loud, self-important way? Why are some 
so reserved and shy? Why are some habitual- 
ly blundering, while others seldom make a 
mistake? Why are some frequently breaking 
things and others not? Why are some hurting 
themselves daily and others seldom meeting a 
mishap? Why are some continually asking ques- 
tions, while others seldom do it? Why do some 
usually forget, while others seem to remember 
everything they meet? Why are some habitually 
open and frank, while others are reticent and re- 
served? In seeking answers to these questions, 
you should not overlook the valuable assistance 
each child's family may give you, especially the 
father and mother. Eemember that the mere dis- 
covery that such habits exist will be of little value. 
Yoii know that now. Their origin and their cor- 
rection in each case are the special objects of this 
study. 

Experiment with the children in habit-break- 
ing and habit-forming. Discover the relation of 
the understanding and the emotions. Find under 
what conditions a child will promptly break a 
habit. Is a bad habit more easily displaced by 
suppressing it directly or by building up other 
habits of an opposite tendency, thus accomplish- 
ing it indirectly? What classes of good or bad 
habits appear to affect habits in general? What 
methods do you find helpful in building up right 
habits of thinking and doing? What elements in 
the child seem to give him stableness of character? 



158 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

What effect have children's plays upon their char- 
acter? Eeview now the functions of physical, in- 
tellectual, prudential, and moral control in the 
process of character-forming. In what way are 
they interdependent? 



CHAPTER XIX. 

children's instincts and plays. 

Instinct is an inhorn disposition to certain ac- 
tivities. It manifests itself in impulses more or 
less efficiently directed to the attainment of spe- 
cific ends. The stimulus to action may come from 
external or internal sources. When the cold " af- 
fects the nervous system of the wild goose in a 
northern latitude, an impulse to action develops 
and the bird flies to a warmer clime." When a 
duck goes into the water, the contact awakens 
the impulse to paddle. " When certain internal 
stimuli make themselves felt in the caterpillar, 
it begins at once to weave its shroud." " Prompted 
by an internal stimulus, the bird starts to build 
its nest; the human being to mate, to search for 
a home, and to take up the round of domestic 
duties toward which his ancestors were likewise 
impelled. Blind impulses due to nervous tension 
have from the beginning of history driven men 
to do certain things." Such an impulse causes a 
mother to shield her child, a panic-stricken army 
to flee, a youth to become an artist, an explorer, 
a scientist, or a philanthropist. These inherent 
tendencies or instincts predetermine in large meas- 
ure the history of each life. 

14 159 



160 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

The impulse to the satisfaction of the child's 
first cravings for food suggests at once the idea 
that all instincts are implanted in the child to 
satisfy certain general demands of his nature, or, 
probably better, to impel to the realization of the 
possibilities of his nature. The impulse to exer- 
cise is not purposeless. It develops strength and 
skill. Both anticipate future needs. The impulse 
to perception, to know things present to the senses, 
calls into exercise knowledge-getting activities 
that later are to grapple with the great problems 
of the universe. The impulse to imitation serves 
to stimulate both physical and mental activity, 
and to make education and progress possible. The 
impvilse to expression devises a multitude of ways 
and means by which mind may communicate its 
ideas to other minds and, as a result, it produces 
all-comprehensive language, the rarest creation of 
the human intellect. 

Out of these impulses and instincts have come 
science and art and philosophy, with their mani- 
fold blessings for the race. But these instincts 
alone would have left man an isolated, selfish 
being, finding pleasure only in the gratification of 
his own personal desires. Wholly absorbed with 
his own interests, he would have little regard for 
the interests of others. His fellows would have 
borne no nearer relation to him than that borne 
by other objects, animate or inanimate, in the 
world about him. The instinct that leads him to 
seek the companionship of his fellows, and that 
finds satisfaction in their presence, their sympa- 
thy, and their co-operation, gives at once a higher 



CHILDREN'S INSTINCTS AND PLAYS. ]61 

meaning to the other instincts mentioned. The 
end of all this is not simply the happiness and 
perfection of the individual, but of the race as 
well. This impulse to fellowship is called the social 
instinct. 

Some of the higher species of animals live in 
pairs, others in communities, flocks, or herds, 
Man mates, but lives also in communities. The 
hermit or the recluse is always regarded as an 
abnormal man. His mode of life interests but 
seldom attracts. The loneliness of Eobinson 
Crusoe will ever continue to arouse the sympa- 
thies of people of all ages. Even in robust health 
few men or women like to be long alone. When 
sickness comes, no better medicine than a sym- 
pathetic friend can be found. Homesickness is a 
universal disease. The social instinct draws peo- 
ple together everywhere. It sets them to serving 
each other. It finds gratification in the happiness 
and prosperity of all. It recognizes common in- 
terests, mutual dependence. It bands the people 
together for mutual protection. It organizes en- 
terprises for the good of the community as a 
whole; it establishes schools, churches, govern- 
ments. The same instinct that draws individuals 
together into communities draws communities to- 
gether into larger communities and into states. 
Thus it awakens the love of home, the love of 
kindred and of native land. Thus it begets the 
various institutions of civilization. 

The utter helplessness of the newborn babe 
confirms, if confirmation were necessary, the idea 
that man was intended to be a social being. Next 



162 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

to its physical demands come the demands for 
the presence* of another person. With each first 
waking moment liow imperatively is this demand 
expressed! With what satisfaction does the child 
nestle in the warm bosom of its mother and with 
what manifestations of delight does it soon wel- 
come the coming of the different members of the 
household! Few observers have failed to note the 
intense interest with which children meeting for 
the first time contemplate one another and how 
short an association may make them necessary to 
each other's happiness. Millions of children have 
been shut in or tied up because they persisted in 
running away to the home of a neighbor in order 
to find some one of their own age to engage in 
play. The most interesting thing to a little boy 
or girl is another little boy or girl, hobbyhorses 
and dolls not excepted. To the child Avho has 
had the pleasure of playing Avitli another child 
there is nothing else in the way of amusement 
quite so desirable. In many ways older people 
satisfy this longing of the child for fellowship, 
but the sweetest joys of childhood are missed by 
the child that has no playmates of approximately 
his own age. 

A study of the plays of children shows their 

great resemblance to the more serious occupations 
of their elders. Children plan ancl execute with 
an interest and an energy that flag only when the 
weary little body demands rest and sleep. They 
strive to imitate almost every conceivable thing 
that their elders do. They build houses, make 
mud pies, plant corn, go to town, teach school. 



CHILDREN'S INSTINCTS AND PLAYS. 163 

give parties, play doctor, dress the dolls, wash 
clothes, build lires, break colts, hold revival serv- 
ices, run lemonade stands, give circus perform- 
ances, play soldier, hive the bees, make garden, 
dig coal mines, write letters, banter, quarrel, fight, 
kill! The earnestness with which they do all 
this shows its intense reality to them, and shows 
further that the instincts of childhood do not dif- 
fer greatly from the instincts of manhood/ Play 
foreshadows the occupations soon to follow. In 
it the imitative, the inventive, the expressive, the 
social instincts of the child find their normal sat- 
isfaction. --Play thus becomes the first great period 
of apprenticeship in the life of the child. In it 
that physical and intellectual control is attained 
which assures easy transition to skill in doing 
work. Play as well as other activities reacts upon 
the child and helps to make him what he is. 

How, then, can any one overlook the impor- 
tance of the child's plays? How can any parent 
or teacher fail to take an abiding interest in every- 
thing that the child attempts to do? The charac- 
ter of his play needs the same attention as that 
given to the character of his food. Some plays 
call the imitative activities into exercise more 
prominently than others, some the inventive, some 
the apperceptive. Some plays quicken the judg- 
ment, others the memory; some call out the rea- 
soning powers, others the imaginative; some de- 
velop muscular strength, others skill. Some chil- 
dren engage in the same play all day long, others 
require a constant change; some prefer quiet 
plays, others the noisy and boisterous; some insist 



164 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

on playing indoors, others seek the free open air; 
some incline to plays that symbolize industrial oc- 
cupations, others to those that symbolize nature or 
adventure; some choose games or plays in which 
there is a contest of mind, others those in which 
the contest is one of physical strength or skill. 
A recent inquiry among a large number of boys 
of eight years of age and upward shows that the 
popular games among them are black man, crack 
the whip, duck on the rock, boxing, baseball, foot- 
ball, etc. The reason almost invariably given was 
that " it is such fun to beat somebody! " In some 
cases the brutal nature crept out a little too clear- 
ly, for such expressions as the following were not 
uncommon: " It is such sport to see a fellow tum- 
ble over and hurt himself! " " Sometimes you can 
knock a fellow and black his eye.^' " It is so 
funny to see the boys and girls fly off the whip 
and then go limping away!" "Because you can 
break an arm or leg sometimes." " If you watch, 
you can knock the breath out of him." Test the 
children on all these points. Discover whether 
the boys and girls like to play together and the 
reasons for it. What do all these different prefer- 
ences indicate? What effect have certain classes 
of plays had upon the school work of the chil- 
ren? 

The range of a child's plays should be so wide 
and so carefully selected as to be developing every 
side of his nature. The kindergarten is most 
happily organized for this purpose; a study of its 
principles and methods will throw much light 
upon the problem. The kindergarten, however, is 



CHILDREN'S INSTINCTS AND PLAYS. 165 

a school, even though its whole aim is to direct 
the play instinct of the child, and therefore fails 
in retaining fully the most essential elements in all 
true play — spontaneity and freedom. The range is 
also necessarily very limited. It presupposes a 
wide range of home plays, and makes them con- 
tribute to its own games and plays. In fact, it 
strives to correlate them all in such a way as to 
make them mutually helpful. The investigation 
suggested in the last paragraph will show that in 
nearly every community there are many children 
who not only have a very limited range of plays, 
but who are also ignorant of the fact that there 
are any other plays than those with which they 
are acquainted. They are narrowed and dwarfed 
and starved from lack of wholesome, stimulating, 
thought-provoking plays. When they enter 
school or start to learn some trade the effect of it 
all is evident enough. 

What the children play is no more momentous 
than how they play. Useful plays may be de- 
vised in abundance, and yet unsatisfactory results 
follow. The liberal hand is not always the wise 
hand. To attain the highest good, plays should 
succeed each other in the order best adapted to 
the child's capacities and needs. A child may en- 
tertain himself day after day for a year with the 
Fame piny, but there can be little growth in it for 
him after a few successive repetitions. Of course, 
the child's pleasure must be consulted in the se- 
lections, else his plays will be of little profit to 
him. It usually requires very little tact to con- 
trol his choice, though there is always danger of 



166 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

a mother following her own notions and conven- 
ience rather than the needs of the child. It is 
always safer to find out the child's instincts and 
be governed by them. The philosophy of a play 
is a very profound thing on the mother's side 
and a very exacting thing on the child's side. 
In nothing else may superficial child study so 
easily mislead as in the management of play. 

Children should be taught how to play with 
the same care that they are taught later in life 
how to work. If properly led and instructed, they 
learn a thousand things in their plays that be- 
come a valuable and a permanent part of their 
mental and physical being. Many girls become 
good seamstresses in cutting and fitting dolls' 
dresses. Many boys learn how to use simple tools 
in playing carpenter. A little friend of mine 
learned more about silkworms by caring for a 
few eggs given her and watching the hatching and 
the metamorphoses through the spinning of the 
cocoons and the flight of the moths than nine 
tenths of the high-school students get out of books 
on entomology. Another became a fair artist in 
playing with his pencils and his water-color 
paints. Another learned many interesting facts 
about great writers in playing " authors/' and in 
after years at school succeeded in passing an ex- 
amination in which that knowledge served her 
well. Are not many of Whitcomb Eiley's poems 
surcharged with images garnered in childhood's 
plays and wanderings? The vividness with which 
Shakespeare describes " the dainty, dew-impearled 
flowers, the shadowy forests and the wide-skirted 



CHILDREN'S INSTINCTS AND PLAYS. 1G7 

meads, the weaving spiders and the honey-bags 
of the bumblebees, the banks where the wild 
thyme blows and the nodding violet grows," tells 
plainly enough how he romped and played on 
many a knoll up and down the beautiful valley 
of the quiet Avon. It also discloses how richly 
these ramblings endowed him for the great work 
of his mature life. 

The effect of play upon the social life of the 
child and upon his character depends much upon 
its management. If two children play together 
happily, one must deny himself all the time for 
the pleasure of the other, or they must make mu- 
tual concessions. Few small children are known 
to play together for any great length of time with- 
out quarreling. One of them may yield to the 
other for awhile, but selfishness overreaches itself 
at last and rebellion results. The issue must be 
settled by an appeal to arms or by concessions 
from the aggressor. A few lessons usually suffice 
to convince children that the latter is the better 
way. Members of the household, particularly the 
parents, may aid the process greatly by discreet 
observation, wise repression, and sympathetic 
counsel. The child is naturally a despot. He 
knows that he is to rule, and often thinks that 
he is to rule others rather than himself. His 
plays furnish the opportunity for the simple les- 
sons in democracy which he needs in order to an- 
ticipate the more responsible duties of neighbor 
and citizen. 



CHAPTEK XX. 

MANNEES AND MOEALS. 

The social instinct, along with all other hu- 
man instincts, is inventive. It is not satisfied 
merely with the presence of other people. It 
soon begins to devise ways and means for its com- 
pleter gratification. It profits by experiences, as 
already explained, and learns to respect the in- 
dividuality of others. It takes pleasure in their 
pleasure. It grieves when they suffer. It identi- 
fies itself with them. Sympathy and love, self- 
denial and service follow. This development being 
more or less reciprocal in the individual cases, 
additional ways and means of showing deference 
and of contributing to the comfort and happiness 
of one another are easily found. Even children 
quickly discover that which will please others, 
and often with rare generosity seek to bestow it. 
The principle is not disproved in saying that many 
children and adults serve others because they ex- 
pect a service in return, nor in saying that they 
labor to make other people happy because their 
sensitiveness to the condition of others is so great 
that they are miserable on seeing them unhappy. 

Out of this spirit of companionship and good 
will have risen the code of manners generally ob- 
168 



MANNERS AND MORALS. 169 

served in good society. Even Bushmen and Pata- 
gonians observe simple forms of etiquette in their 
social intercourse. Pirates and outlaws are as ex- 
acting in certain social requirements as are the 
Knickerbockers of New York city. The simple 
folk of the Scotch Highlands and the humble peas- 
antry of the Tyrol are models of courtesy and 
good breeding. All civilized people are governed 
by social customs that are held in as high esteem 
as the statute laws. They touch every phase of 
the domestic and the community life. They in- 
clude the relation of master and servant, of supe- 
rior and inferior, of peers and equals, of old and 
young, of friends and strangers, of the same sex 
and of opposite sexes; they include the proprie- 
ties of the street, the railway ear, the church, the 
club, the public assembly, the parlor, the dining 
room, etc. Few men who are lacking in good 
manners are successful in business or professional 
life. The secret of the art of managing men is 
found largely in the art of treating them courte- 
ously. Emerson says that " address, good man- 
ners, rule the world." It makes friends, it wins 
votes, it brings trade, it opens the door to the 
social circle, it forwards diplomacy, it disarms 
hostility, it secures co-operation, it everywhere 
contributes to the comfort and the enjoyment of 
mankind. The utility of good manners is often 
overlooked in the education of children. 

Mere politeness should not be confused with 
good manners. The former is simply the observ- 
ance of external forms. The latter is the gen- 
erous expression of the self in friendly deference 



170 THE STUDY OF THE CHTLD. 

to others. Politeness is more or less studied and 
artificial; good manners are sympathetic and 
spontaneous. The former is put on as occasion 
demands, the latter are so fully a part of the self 
that they are never easily cast aside. Affectation 
tries to hide itself in politeness; sincerity expresses 
itself in good manners. All efforts to teach the 
children the forms of social intercourse without 
exalting the kindly spirit above the graceful act 
must result in making them merely polite. A 
selfish child may be polite, but not good-man- 
nered. The essential in all cases is a large heart, 
a warm heart, and an honest heart. Good man- 
ners are bred into children; politeness is put on 
the outside of them. To know how to act in com- 
pany is but a small part of good manners; it is 
just as important to know how to act in the family 
circle and in the associations of everyday life. 

The development of good manners in children 
is largely dependent upon the presence of good 
manners in the home. If affection and personal 
solicitude for each other's comfort control the 
actions of the older people that gather round 
the hearthstone, the little children will hardly be 
long in catching the spirit as well as the action. 
Children reared in such homes are usually easy 
and self-possessed in any company. They are 
not obliged to " put on " when among strangers, 
and consequently they suffer little embarrassment 
at any time. 

As previously suggested, every child needs 
friendly counsel and advice concerning his ac- 
tions toward others. There may be occasions 



MANNERS AND MORALS. 171 

when he needs to be reminded that he is petulant 
or selfish, angry or boisterous, forward or obtrusive, 
thoughtless or cruel, uncouth or vulgar, imperti- 
nent or disrespectful. There certainly are occasions 
when he needs to be shown how to be gentle and 
considerate, to control his temper and to respect 
the rights of others, to be self-sacrificing and gen- 
erous, to be modest and retiring. These virtues 
lie at the very basis of good manners. Every 
child is entitled to be taught also the simple mat- 
ters of form in table etiquette, in entering and 
leaving the homes of others, in meeting people 
in the street, in inviting or accepting the com- 
pany of others, in welcoming and entertaining 
guests, etc. It is difficult to separate good man- 
ners from grace of body and from grace in sit- 
ting, standing, walking, talking, and gesture. 
These make up part of the social as well as the 
physical education of the child. 

In the study of the social life of children the 
inquiries, as in other investigations suggested, 
should embrace both the facts and their causes. 
Why are some children coarse and ill-mannered, 
while others from the same home are refined and 
agreeable? AVliy are some familiar with the 
forms of polite society, and yet arrogant and boor- 
ish in their relations to other children? Why are 
some children great favorites with their class- 
mates, while others have few friends? Why are 
some naturally affable and popular, while others 
are disagreeable in spite of every effort to please? 
How closely allied to good manners are habits of 
cleanliness and neatness, good morals, etc.? 



172 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Manners and morals are not separated very far 
from each other. Eosenkranz says that moral 
culture is the essence of social culture. As ex- 
plained in the preceding paragraphs, all social 
forms have had their origin in the desire to mul- 
tiply and enhance the pleasures of social inter- 
course. That desire rises from love and sympa- 
thy, the crowning graces of the ideal moral and 
religious life. Prudential action — that is, action 
for advantage or profit to the self — may be char- 
acteristic of much business and social intercourse. 
If, however, the action is prompted by the motive 
of good to others, it becomes moral. Prudential 
control suggests the idea of getting; moral control, 
the idea of heing. The test of a man's prudence 
is in what he has; of his morals, in what he is. 
The distinguishing characteristics of the former 
are foresight, vigilance, industry, economy, cour- 
age, self-possession, perseverance, self-interest; of 
the latter, integrity, sincerity, fidelity, forbear- 
ance, sympathy, gentleness, temperance, meek- 
ness, purity, brotherly kindness, charity. Pru- 
dential control raises the c^uestion, What profit? 
Moral control. What good? In prudential control 
the motive is always advantage; in moral control, 
it may be the good or the bad. The former is 
Judged by its attainments; the latter by its mo- 
tives. 

The moral idea grows out of the social. The 
latter recognizes the relations of individuals to 
each other. The former recognizes its obligation 
to realize those relations. Whatever it can do to 
benefit others becomes dutv: whatever it can do 



MANNERS AND MORALS. 173 

for the self which will enhance its power to serve 
others is also duty. It builds up a personal ideal 
whose realization becomes a duty, a consuming 
desire. Actions in conformity with it are called 
right; those in opposition are called wrong. It is 
readily seen that moral emotions, moral affections, 
and moral desires develop with moral ideas. Moral 
control is attained in the same general way as 
physical, intellectual, and prudential control, and 
is the end of all the others. Herbart says that 
that education which has not morality for its su- 
preme end must result in hopeless confusion. 

The child's impulses are to be true. Tempta- 
tion to be untrue comes when he wishes to shield 
himself against ridicule or punishment, or to as- 
tonish somebody by a big story. Every one has 
noticed how particular a little child is to have the 
minutest details of an incident correctly given. 
If mother, in relating some household incident 
that occurred the day before, happens to omit a 
part of it which she does not care to repeat to 
the visitor, little Mary is sure to remind her of it 
and to tell it herself. Erroneous or incomplete 
notions of a thing at the time of its occurrence 
easily explain the tenacity with which children 
cling to wrong statements they afterward make 
concerning it. In other cases, faulty memory, 
laziness, or indifference may explain what appears 
to be a deliberate falsehood. Whatever the cause 
of misrepresentation, the tendency soon becomes 
a habit unless promptly checked. Once a habit, 
it begins to breed every sort of deception, and to 
corrupt the whole moral nature of the child. 



y 



174 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD, 

Truth and sincerity are the basic virtues in all 
morality. Without them there can be no moral 
character. 

Only when a child begins to distinguish be- 
tween right and wrong may he be said to have a 
moral character. The moral element begins to 
appear when he does what his parents tell him to 
do because he loves and respects them; when for 
the same reason he denies himself the pleasure of 
gratifying a desire to do a forbidden thing. It 
certainly is not present when he obeys them from 
fear of punishment — a cat or a dog does the same 
thing. I once heard a little girl say to her mother, 
" I did not read that book, because I thought you 
Avould not wish me to do it." That is a step 
further in advance, but she has made greater 
progress when the discovery that the book is evil 
immediately begets aversion to it bcause her na- 
ture finds no pleasure in it. 

Ask a dozen children why they do certain 
things which you consider morally good, and care- 
fully note their answers. It will not take long 
to discover that the moral element lies not in the 
act itself, but in the motive, the intention. Dis- 
cover the causes which prompted the reasons given 
by the children. Some will cite the authority of 
parent or teacher and others will give their own 
reasons for their answers. Some will probably 
quote apt maxims and others maxims that have 
no bearing whatever on the subject. How promi- 
nent is the personal or selfish element in the an- 
swers? 

The moral instinct or impulse of the child 



MANNERS AND MORALS. 175 

strengthens with every effort he makes to know 
and to do what is right. The law of reaction is even 
more clear here than elsewhere. Apperception of 
the right in each individual case is dependent 
upon the moral character as then organized; the 
momentum of the impulse to its realization is 
similarly dependent. In the beginning he may 
be doing right things impulsively, or out of 
pure sympathy, or from a desire to please others, 
or in obedience to authority, or for personal 
advantage that may come. Along with the 
pleasure in right doing gradually develops the 
sense of obligation and of individual responsi- 
bility. 

Little progress in moral culture will be mak- 
ing unless the child's ideas of right being and 
right doing are daily growing more definite and 
more clear. He must not only love the trutli^ 
but must know what is truth; not only desire to 
be honest, but must be able to discern what is 
honest; not only love noble conduct, but have 
the power to recognize it when he sees it; not 
only hold purity in high esteem, but know in what 
purity consists; not only love his fellows, but also 
understand his duties toward them. Many people 
are negatively good, but lack nearly every active 
moral virtue. 

Conscience is the complex activity which dis- 
cerns right and wrong and impels to right action. 
Its simple analysis shows — 

1. A general idea or conception of right. 

2. Judgment as to the conformity of a par- 
ticular act to the general idea. 

15 



176 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

3. A feeling of obligation to do what the judg- 
ment affirms to be right. 

4. The effort to perform the act. 

5. The feeling of satisfaction accompanying 
and following the effort, or dissatisfaction if no 
effort is made. 

With this analysis before lis it is not difficult 
to see more fully the dependence of moral char- 
acter upon environment and education. The 
problems of right action are incomparably higher 
than any problems of the physical universe. Their 
solution in each individual case requires the co- 
operation of all the activities of the self. How 
important, then, that everything entering into the 
life of the child should be tested by its effect 
upon his moral nature! 

The reason for urging a clear understanding 
of the real nature of good manners now hardly 
needs an explanation. If the nobleness of spirit 
has been keeping pace with the nobleness of man- 
ners, the transition to good morals is already 
made. If otherwise, the child has simply been 
given the power to cover up his true nature and 
to deceive his fellows at his will. 

The presentation and development of right 
motives in children is the most delicate problem 
in education. The exercise of authority or of 
force will not accomplish it. Nagging and scold- 
ing make little progress toward it. Eewards and 
prizes will not do much better. Advantage and 
profit unduly exalt self-interest. Words of ap- 
preciation and of praise may stimulate to right 
doing. Eespect and affection for others may serve 



MANNERS AND MORALS. 177 

as a powerful restraint against evil. Some of 
these will have but a temporary effect in promot- 
ing right conduct, while all will lack the essence 
of the moral life — the impulse to do right for 
right's sake alone, regardless of personal pleasure, 
personal profit, or of profit to others. 

This statement should not be construed as 
meaning that the motives named are at all times 
unwise and hurtful. All of them, not even ex- 
cepting the second, may profitably be used in the 
different stages of the child's development. There 
are times when he is incapable of appreciating 
any other motive than that of physical force. 
There are other times when he will more quickly 
respond to a promised reward, or to suggestions 
of advantage, or to words of encouragement, or to 
an appeal from one whom he respects and loves, 
or to the simple assurance that an act in question 
is right. In the development of the child's mo- 
tives, the following simple rules will be found 
valuable: 

1. Use negative or restrictive motives spar- 
ingly, relying rather upon positive motives or in- 
centives. 

2. Appeal to the motive which the child can 
appreciate. 

3. Appeal constantly to the highest motive 
the child can appreciate. 

4. Improve each vantage gained to educate 
the child to appreciate a higher motive. 

5. Eliminate the personal or selfish element 
as rapidly as possible. 

6. Be patient for results. Eelax vigilance only 



178 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

when the impulse to the good dominates the 
child's entire being. 

Make the question of motives a frequent study 
in the management of your children. At what 
age, if any, are they disposed to ignore the au- 
thority of their superiors? In what way, if any, 
does the pubescent period affect the manners and 
morals of r children? What effect has home train- 
ing had upon them? Are you ruling some of 
them by sheer authority or by brute force? Are 
you satisfied simply with their co-operation, even 
though secured by a low motive, or are you using 
the various means at your command for develop- 
ing higher ideals for right action? Are you ap- 
preciating the sensitiveness of some of the rare 
little souls intrusted to your care and are you 
giving them that sympathy and counsel for which 
they crave every hour of the day? Are you on 
the alert for the slightest indication of a better 
spirit and a readier service in each child? Are 
you living so blameless that every time the child's 
life touches yours he is quickened to nobler en- 
deavor? 



: CHAPTER XXI. 

NOKMALS AND ABNOKMALS. 

Normal means natural or conformable to a 
type. The term may be applied to a child that 
at birth has a perfect body or to one whose phys- 
ical or mental development is approximately the 
same as that of the average child of an equal age. 
If imperfectly formed, or if much beyond or behind 
in development, he is called abnormal. The term 
abnormal may be applied to a child who is un- 
visually bright for his age as well as to one who 
is unusually stupid; to one who is excessively 
large for his age as well as to one who is par- 
ticularly small. It is also applied to any one who 
is misshapen in any way, or who has unnatural 
enlargement or atrophy of any physical organ. 
The variation should be sufficiently marked to be 
readily noticeable in each case before the term 
abnormal can be properly applied. 

Unusually bright children are often called 
precocious; unusually dull, defective. The term 
exceptional is applied to both classes by many 
writers. The child of six years of age that knows 
as much as the average child of ten is as much an 
object of interest and inquiry as the child at ten 
that knows no more than the average child at 

179 



180 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

six. There is scarcely a schoolroom anywhere in 
which both are not found. Some children have 
fine memories, and yet seem utterly wanting in 
judgment; others remember practically every- 
thing they hear, but can recall little that they see. 
Occasionally a child is met that has prodigious 
mathematical ability who can not be made to 
understand the merest rudiments of language or 
of science. 

Many children seem to be perfectly formed 
externally, and yet are seriously defective in one 
or more of the special senses or in some of the 
vital organs. While the per cent of children seri- 
ously defective at birth is small, the per cent more 
or less deficient is much larger than many peo- 
ple suppose. Occasionally a family is found in 
which every child is defective physically, the de- 
fect being of the eye in one, of the ear in another, 
possibly of both in a third, of motor control in a 
fourth, a defect of the brain or of some other 
organ in a fifth. In many families but one defect- 
ive child may be found, the others being perfectly 
formed. In some families a child with a serious 
physical blemish has not been known for genera- 
tions. 

Some physically deformed children seem to be 
little more than freaks, so subtle are the causes 
producing the deformities. Several cases coming 
within my personal knowledge are so unusual on 
both sides of the family that the recognized laws 
of heredity do not account for them. In some 
cases the failure of certain bones to ossify proper- 
ly, the arrested development of the cerebral tis- 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 181 

sues, the paralysis of the motor nervous system, 
the withering or shrinking of an arm or a leg, 
the atrophy of a special sense, seems to be due to 
some adventitious or accidental cause, as is fre- 
quently seen in other animals and in plants. In 
many children the physical deformities are easily 
traceable to measles, mumps, spotted fever, spinal 
meningitis, typhoid fever, whooping-cough, scar- 
let fever, scrofula, smallpox, and other diseases. 
In such cases, the physical deformity is not usu- 
ally accompanied by an impairment of the mental 
faculties. Investigations show that in a large ma- 
jority of cases spinal curvature, bandy legs, pigeon 
toes, and distortions of similar character are due 
to bad habits in sitting, standing, or walking in 
childhood. Not a few of them may be charged 
to the unsatisfactory desks in use in the schools. 
Inherited weakness may be the remote cause in 
many cases, but proper care might have prevented 
serious perversion. 

Inherited diseases and deformities may be 
traced to one of three general causes: a similar 
disease or deformity in one or both parents, con- 
stitutional weakness in one or both, or bad habits 
in one or both. Instances without number might 
be cited to prove the regularity with which the 
law of heredity transmits the infirmities of the 
parents to the children. Its significance would 
be most appalling were it not for the fact that 
the same law governs the transmission of physical 
excellence, and that wise treatment may largely 
overcome the evils of heredity. Parents conscious 
of their own constitutional tendencies have by a 



182 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

rigid system of hygiene maintained sucli a vigor- 
ous physical tone in themselves and in their chil- 
dren that the prospective affections have been en- 
tirely averted. The presence of any constitutional 
or chronic malady in either parent is always evi- 
dence of its probable appearance in the children, 
and if this study does nothing more than put 
those in authority over them on the alert for the 
discovery and for the intelligent treatment of 
such cases, it will deserve well of mankind. It is 
an interesting fact that certain apparently oppo- 
site physical temperaments, though constitution- 
ally weak, bring forth strong and healthy off- 
spring. This tendency to mutual correction shows 
itself even in trivial irregularities. A neighbor's 
nose pointed distinctly to the right. The nose 
of his wife pointed to the left. The daughter's 
nose was normal! 

The effect of the habits and occupations of 
the parents upon their children needs special em- 
phasis. A few generations of musicians insiire 
the fingers of the coming children to be well 
adapted to play upon musical instruments. The 
children of the lacemakers inherit that delicacy 
and suppleness of the muscles of the hand by 
Avhich their ancestors have ever excelled their 
competitors in the markets of the world. Insur- 
ance companies not only lay great stress upon the 
constitutional tendencies of a candidate's ances- 
tors, but also upon his personal habits as well. 
Anything that affects a man's vitality affects that 
of his future offspring also. The long train of 
physical infirmities in children that may easily 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 183 

be traced to narcotic habits in one or both parents 
is well known. The responsibility that a per- 
sistent user of alcohol or tobacco assumes is now 
so clearly established that it seems superfluous to 
appeal to statistics concerning it. 

In the matter of eyesight alone, Dr. T. H. 
Dinsmore discovers thirty-one defectives out of 
eighty-six children whose fathers were addicted to 
alcoholic beverages. Out of three hundred and 
ninety-nine children whose fathers used tobacco 
before and after marriage, two hundred and 
twenty-four had weak eyes. The inquiries in- 
cluded children of old soldiers who used tobacco 
before their children were born, and it was found 
that one hundred and ten out of one hundred and 
fifty-six examined had impaired vision. It is con- 
ceded that some of the responsibility should be 
attributed to the hardships of the field, and pos- 
sibly to other causes, but the summary contains 
a plain warning. One of Dugdale's Juke tables 
shows that but one out of nineteen temperate 
Jukes was diseased, and that ten out of thirteen 
intemperate were in ill health. Dr. Tatham, the 
British registrar-general, believes that the use of 
alcohol is the chief cause of excessive death rates, 
and says that the liquor trades are fatal to those 
who engage in them. His figures show the clergy 
to be the healthiest people in the world. 

Physical degeneration in parents, whether 
caused by alcoholism, the opium habit, licentious- 
ness, or excesses of any other kind, seldom fails 
to manifest itself in some way in the bodies of its 
progeny. Sometimes the subtle poison does not 



184 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

begin its work until manhood or middle life, but 
it often discloses its jDresence in the cradle. Nerv- 
ous disorders, scrofulous tendencies, proneness to 
epilepsy, pulmonic weakness, and kindred affec- 
tions, with their mournful train of miseries, tell 
too plainly that somebody has violated the laws 
of Nature. Joseph Cook quotes Oliver Wendell 
Holmes as saying, in response to the declaration 
that any disease may be cured if a physician is 
called early enough, that the statement is true, 
" but ' early enough ' would usually mean two 
hundred years in advance.^^ Miss Clark, a high 
authority, says: " The imbecile is the result of 
corrupt living, frequently of guilt, sometimes of 
a line of ancestry unbrightened for a generation 
by a single responsible moral individual. In every 
case where a child has not been made imbecile 
through some prenatal shock, accident, or sick- 
ness, somewhere in the family annals there have 
been opium eating, immoral living, drunkenness, 
insanity, imbecility, or actual crime — perhaps 
all." Thirty-four per cent of the imbecile chil- 
dren are the immediate offspring of intemperate 
parents. 

Inherited physical deformity means mental 
deformity, particularly when the former is an 
affection of the cerebral or sensory nerves, or even 
of the motor organism. So positively has this 
been demonstrated that in the treatment of feeble- 
minded and insane children, as well as of adults, 
physicians attempt to correct physical disorder 
first. With the normal physical functions re- 
stored, mental equilibrium also ordinarily returns. 



NORMALS AKD ABNORMALS. 185 

Maudsley says, " No one nowadays who is engaged 
in the treatment of mental disease doubts that he 
has to do with the disordered function of a bodily 
organ — of the brain." Ufer asserts that " by far 
the larger part of mental disturbance in children 
is due to bodily complaints; a good proportion of 
these can be cured, whereas, if ignored, incurable 
diseases will arise." 

The gradations from the strictly normal mind 
to the completely unbalanced mind follow very 
closely the gradations from the perfect nervous 
organism to that state of the brain in which all 
cerebral action is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. 
Intellectually speaking, the term normal is usually 
applied to a variety of minds that are more or 
less defective in some directions, just as the term 
normal is applied to bodies which are approxi- 
mately perfect. It should be borne in mind that 
every case varying from the normal, inside and 
outside the range just named, is, if not merely 
slow in development, just so much away toward 
imbecility or insanity. The causes leading to 
mental defects are, in general, the same as those 
already mentioned as leading to physical defects. 
Some investigators think that mental traits are 
often directly transmitted by inheritance, though 
others maintain that the physical traits are re- 
sponsible for the transmission in all cases. How- 
ever that may be, mental activity and mental 
growth are dependent upon the facility and ex- 
actness with which the physical organism per- 
forms its functions. If any of the sense organs 
be defective, there must be a corresponding lack 



186 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

of perception of the external world, and a conse- 
quent retardation in mental development. Super- 
intendent Ivlock;, after a thorough examination 
of the pupils in the Helena city schools, says that 
" in cases where children have attended school 
regularly for from eight to twelve years, and are 
from six months to two years behind in their 
grades, the loss of time is due almost invariably 
to defective eyesight or hearing, one or both." 
The mind is dependent upon the senses for the 
material which it elaborates into knowledge. Its 
higher activities develop normally only as the 
lower supply material in abundance and variety, 
hence the disadvantage under which every defec- 
tive sense labors. 

Physical and mental defectives are, generally 
speaking, moral defectives. It is well to remem- 
ber here that a moral defective is not necessarily 
actively bad. He may be simply motiveless, or 
without impulse to moral action of any kind. 
Four classes of morally defective children may be 
recognized: 

1. The harmless, passive sort, little energy, 
little strength in desire of any kind. 

2. Those inclined to the good, though with 
little will power, easily misled. 

3. The stubborn, evil-minded, cruel, sensu- 
ous passions prominent, intellectually dull. 

4. The cunning, dishonest, inclined to petty 
thieving and to sneaking tricks, intellectually 
bright. 

All these classes of moral abnormals, more 
or less defined, are often found in one school- 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 187 

room. In a few localities they embrace a dan- 
gerously large proportion of the school children. 
As a consequence their management becomes a 
most perplexing problem. The intelligent treat- 
ment of moral defects must ever depend upon a 
knowledge of their origin. 

Pathologists and criminologists generally agree 
that the law of heredity accounts for moral tem- 
peraments as fully as for the physical and intel- 
lectual. The authenticated story of the Juke 
family already mentioned may be approximately 
duplicated a thousand times over. In one hun- 
dred and fifty years " the descendants of one man, 
a hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and com- 
panionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by 
spurts and idling by turns, becoming blind in his 
old age, and entailing his blindness upon his chil- 
dren and grandchildren," contributed one hun- 
dred and forty criminals and offenders, including 
seven murderers. This showing does not include 
the long list of paupers, harlots, roustabouts, 
drunkards, petty thieves undetected, liars, cheats, 
disturbers of the peace, etc. Eibot tells of an edu- 
cated man who secretly indulged in the alcoholic 
habit. Only one of his five children lived to ma- 
turity. That one was cruel almost from birth, 
and delighted in torturing animals in every con- 
ceivable way. He soon proved physically and 
mentally feeble, and at nineteen went to the in- 
sane asylum. Morel examined one hundred and 
fifty " children of the commune," ranging from 
ten to seventeen years of age, and says: "I am 
confirmed in my previous convictions as to the 



188 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

baneful effects produced by alcohol, not only in 
the individuals who use this detestable drink to 
excess, but also in their descendants. On their 
depraved physiognomy is impressed the threefold 
stamp of physical, intellectual, and moral de- 
generacy.'^ 

The transmission of certain kinds of immoral 
instincts is also clearly established. In some 
families it is lying; in others, cattle-stealing, 
homicide, burglary, pocket-picking, quarreling, 
incendiarism, dishonesty, forgery, licentiousness, 
etc. Eecently a newspaper stated that a noted 
cattle thief had been killed, and added signifi- 
cantly that several other members of his family 
are now serving sentences in the penitentiary for 
cattle-stealing. 

But heredity is not the only force effectively 
at work in a child's early life corrupting his moral 
nature. Environment, as a deadly nightshade, 
insidiously pours its venom into his heart. 
Breathing the fetid air of an ill-ventilated, drunk- 
en home, hearing nothing but oaths and obscene 
words from dissolute and vicious parents, mingling 
with foul-mouthed, mischief-plotting companions, 
taught that to lie and steal and fight make the 
ideal man, is it a wonder that the boy enters 
school " morally abnormal " ? His hereditary 
tendency being enforced by such environment 
and training, it were a miracle if it were other- 
wise. From such a home as that all the way up 
to the ideal fireside are homes lacking in varying 
degrees the spirit and assistance necessary to build 
up true moral character. Put a child blest with 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 189 

a royal inheritance in such an environment, and 
what must be his fate? 

This much space has been given to ilhistrate 
the causes that produce weak and abnormal chil- 
dren in the hope that sufficient interest may be 
aroused to insure a more exhaustive study of the 
unfortunates who ever appeal to us for sympathy 
and help. The average teacher and parent is too 
much disposed to ignore the presence of these fun- 
damental defects in his children, and to treat them 
with a harshness that aggravates rather than re- 
lieves the infirmity. They overlook the law that 
the slightly abnormal tendencies of early child- 
hood, unless intelligently corrected, may even in 
early manhood bring utter ruin to body and mind. 
Two seemingly parallel straight lines may he hut an 
inch apart at their origin and yet he ten feet apart 
at the end of a mile! Sufficient has been said to 
show that defectives are common enough to re- 
quire that all persons intrusted with the care and 
culture of children should familiarize themselves 
with the peculiarities of each child's physical, men- 
tal, and moral nature, and treat it as its individual 
needs demand. The average child has been given 
too much attention; the exceptional, both above 
and below the average, too little. There has been 
a vast waste in our attempts to teach children in 
the mass rather than as individuals; to force them 
to come up to certain ideal standards rather than 
to take the time to find and to apply the means 
which their individual natures demand. Igno- 
rance and thoughtlessness on the part of parents 
and teachers will not be excused much longer. 



190 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

Many teachers accidentally discover facts con- 
cerning their pupils after they have done them 
great injustice. A personal friend tells me that 
one day a pupil asked for the repetition of an ex- 
planation of a principle which he had Just given. 
He had taken much time and great care in giv- 
ing it and thought all understood it. With con- 
scious impatience, he exclaimed, " I should think 
that even an idiot could understand that." Her 
eyes filled M'ith tears and, as the class filed out, 
she remained in her chair sobbing convulsively. 
He apologized for his language, and asked why 
she was so deeply affected. She replied: "Sir, 
my mother is in an insane asylum, and we chil- 
dren are in constant dread lest we may go there 
too. I feared you might be telling the truth, and 
that I am possibly already an idiot." Though he 
has taught many years since, he assures me that 
he has never again spoken unkindly to a pupil. 

Some years ago a teacher in one of the grades 
was annoyed by the slowness of one of his pupils, 
and in desperation took her by the back of the 
neck and shook her severely. She had been af- 
flicted a long time with spinal weakness, but at 
the opening of the year her parents hoped her 
sufficiently convalescent to enter school again. 
Her slowness was caused by her malady and her 
intense desire not to do anything which might 
cause its return. No wonder that was an anxious 
night in that household! In a spelling class the 
other day I asked the students to criticise the 
work of their classmates, and to mark the mis- 
spelled words. One of them complained to me 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. 191 

that her critic had marked three words in her 
writing speller that were correctly spelled, thotigh 
they had been spelled aloud for her guidance. The 
next day I took occasion to speak of the matter, 
assuring them that each critic would be held re- 
sponsible for his work. As the class was dis- 
missed, the critic mentioned came to me and con- 
fessed. I asked why she did it. She replied: " My 
eyes! I suppose it must be my eyes." Examination 
showed that she was right, and her many blun- 
ders were all explained. I had occasion once to 
reprimand, for the third or fourth time, a young 
Avoman who had been giving me much anxiety by 
her repeated indiscretions. She smiled as I spoke 
of her offenses, and giggled as I assured her that 
she was at the point of suspension. In surprise, 
I asked why she received my reproof with such 
levity. She answered that often when she wanted 
to cry she laughed, and that often when she 
wanted to laugh she cried. With a word or two, 
I excused her from the room and sought further 
light. It came from a friend, who said: "That 
young woman has suffered from childhood with 
epilepsy. For a year or more she had been so 
nearly well that her parents were assured last 
summer by her physician that if she could be 
sent among strangers for awhile she would prob- 
ably forget her affliction, and in her new sur- 
roundings attain perfect health and self-control. 
She undoubtedly told you the truth about her 
crying and laughing muscles becoming crossed at 
times. Epileptics can hardly be expected to be 
either intellectually or morally normal." 
16 



192 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

A little fellow who was trying " awfully hard " 
to be good said to his teacher one day: " It is 
easy for you to be good. Your father was a min- 
ister. My father was bad, and drank and swore 
and gambled, and sometimes I feel that I must 
do just as he did." A young colored girl in the 
South said to a noble woman who had befriended 
her, " When I see how wicked so many of my 
kindred are, I often wonder whether it can be 
possible that I shall always live an upright life." 
These children, and thousands of others like 
them, are in the schools of every State in the 
Union. And yet you often hear people speak of 
" the sickly, sentimental doctrine of heredity! " 

But in addition to these there is also a great 
army of children more or less belated in develop- 
ment along some of the lines heretofore men- 
tioned. The bright, active child is encouraged 
and given a better chance than his sluggish broth- 
er. The natural modesty of one and the froward- 
ness of another may explain the difference in their 
mental growth, for one has hesitated to improve 
an opportunity without encouragement, while the 
other boldly took advantage of it. The former 
fails to get the experience he needs, while the 
latter may gain even more than he needs. One 
child is sent to school because he likes to go, and 
another is kept at home occasionally because he 
likes work better than school. Ere long he loses 
class standing and, after a few spasmodic efforts 
at attendance, drops out of school forever. This 
whole chapter is a special plea for the children 
that for the various reasons cited do not get so 



NORMALS AND ABNORMALS. ' 193 

good a start as some of their more fortunate broth- 
ers and sisters. Some of them are the rarest spir- 
its that ever breathed, but all, no matter what 
their ancestry or what their talents, are entitled 
to that sympathy and encouragement which will 
give them an equal chance with their fellows in 
the struggle for life. The abnormal tendencies 
of the race are to be corrected by purifying the 
blood and perfecting the powers of the individual 
child. 

The suggestions, already offered in the various 
chapters will guide in many of these inquiries, but 
a few additional ones are here given. Note the 
peculiarities in each child and seek for their 
causes. If a child is disposed to be active, does 
his activity have a purpose, or is it evidently aim- 
less and purposeless? Discover whether he is 
sensitive or hysterical; whether he " goes to 
pieces " easily; whether he is exceedingly voluble, 
but apparently knows little about anything; 
whether, though apparently trying, he is failing 
to make any progress in the work assigned him; 
Avhether he is Avanting in ideals and motives; 
whether he is interested in trivial things or in 
matters of importance; whether the shape of his 
head is suggestive of feeble cranial capacity; 
whether the face indicates unusual cunning or 
shrewdness; whether the mouth and lips provoke 
a suspicion of vulgarity or sensuality; whether he 
is retiring, sullen, despondent, sanguine, persever- 
ing, standing still, or growing; whether he is de- 
fective in speech or muscular control. Whether 
he is conscious of his defects and whether his 



194 THE STUDY OF THE CHiLU. 

fellow-pupils are treating him in such a way as 
to increase his embarrassment. 

The question frequently arises as to the 
amount of time that should be given to defective 
or delinquent children. The answer must be 
found in the needs of all. The interests of all 
should not be sacrificed for the benefit of the few. 
The aggressive, ambitious children must not • be 
held back until the slow ones catch up. Absolute 
uniformity is impossible, much less desirable. If 
reasonable time and effort fail to accomplish any- 
thing with a child, he should be put exclusively 
under individual supervision or sent to a school 
devoted to serious and obstinate defectives. It 
should not be supposed that child study means 
the neglect of Nature's favored ones. It means 
such an acquaintance with every child as will 
enable the parent and teacher to adopt such meth- 
ods of instruction and to produce such environ- 
ments as will insure the most rapid progress pos- 
sible in the development of all classes. 



CHAPTEE XXII. 

STAGES OF GKOWTH, FATIGUE POINT, ETC. 

For lack of space several important subjects 
intimately related to the child's growth and well- 
being must be treated with great brevity. 

Infancy, childhood, and youth are the three 
stages through which the child passes in his move- 
ment toward manhood. Sense-perception is the 
chief characteristic of his intellectual life in in- 
fancy, memory and imagination become active in 
childhood, thinking and reasoning predominate 
in youth. Infancy is the stage of dependence. 
It is spent at home, because of the individual 
sympathy and individual supervision then re- 
quired. The period of childhood in a general way 
may be said to extend from the fifth to the twelfth 
year. At the beginning of this period the child 
is supposed to have attained sufficient develop- 
ment and self-control to enable him to mingle 
with children outside of his own household with- 
out much personal supervision; to enable him to 
take care of himself under ordinary circumstances; 
and to warrant his being sent to school. Youth 
begins with the pubescent period, at about the 
age of twelve. Independence and restlessness 
under restraint manifest themselves here more em- 

195 



196 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

phatically than in either preceding period. The 
new impulses which the radical physical changes 
at this time beget start the youth into new lines 
of inquiry and investigation, not infrequently de- 
veloping irreverence, heedlessness, selfishness, and 
disobedience to an unfortunate degree. The 
grades in the public schools most difficult to gov- 
ern are those embracing children from eleven to 
fourteen years of age. 

Each of these three periods has several other 
characteristics peculiar to itself which observation 
will reveal. The way in which the child adjusts 
liimself to the new environment as he leaves home 
to enter the schoolroom is an interesting and in- 
structive study. This is one of the critical periods 
of his life, and for the successful transition dis- 
creet management is imperative. In many cases 
the approach of the pubescent period may be dis- 
covered through the mental changes in the child, 
even before the physical changes are manifest. 
The dispositions of infancy and childhood, wheth- 
er good or bad, now usually become positively 
prominent, and character more clearly defines. 
Some surprising changes in mental power also 
occur. A child with a poor memory may sud- 
denly show rare ability in remembering things; 
one sluggish in perception throughout childhood 
may become apt in discernment; one with a vivid 
imagination may become indifferent and prosy; 
one of habitually happy disposition may show 
symptoms of discontent or melancholy. If the 
transition be healthy and natural, the intelligent 
education and training of infancy and childhood 



STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. I97 

begin at once to show results in superior judg- 
ment, in clear moral conceptions, and in a well- 
balanced will. These three stages in the child's 
development can not be definitely assigned to the 
limits mentioned, but they are sufficiently ap- 
proximate to assist parent and teacher to a better 
understanding of the more critical years in the 
child's life and to suggest the need for a thorough 
understanding of ways and means adapted to each 
stage. 

Children's ideals and motives are constantly 
changing and methods of instruction and of man- 
agement must change with them. Many a youth 
is alienated from his father because his father does 
not understand him. He has failed to note that 
the child is a child no longer, but that he is reach- 
ing up into manhood and is thinking and reason- 
ing for himself; that he is on that account entitled 
to have his own views and preferences heard with 
reasonable consideration. Many a youth goes out 
into the world for the sympathy and fellowship 
that are denied him at home. 

The stage of the child's development should 
control in the administration of punishment. In- 
discriminate punishment is worse than the indis- 
criminate use of medicine, however bad that may 
be. The old idea that retribution should be the 
controlling aim in the punishment of children is 
as cruel as it is unreasonable. That idea with very 
little suggestion comes into more or less promi- 
nence in the mind of the child anyhow. Punish- 
ment should in general be administered for the 
purpose of quickening the child's perception of 



198 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

right and wrong and of assisting him to resist 
temptation. Children err more often from lack 
of discernment than from lack of desire to do right. 
They are only learning what is right and what is 
wrong. Their characters are in the formative 
state and the spirit of helpfulness should always 
govern the inculcation of motives, whether through 
the positive forces of instruction and guidance or 
through the negative force of punishment. As a 
means of correction, punishment should serve for 
a temporary purpose only. The great and ever- 
active forces in character-building are sympathy 
and counsel, not punishment, as already explained 
in the chapter on Manners and Morals. Methods 
of correction which are slowly driving the child 
away from parent or teacher are their own con- 
demnation. Nothing but that intimate acquaint- 
ance with the individual child demanded in the 
foregoing chapters will suffice for the wise de- 
termination of the necessity for punishment and 
of the kind of punishment that will prove most 
effective. Differences in disposition, in physical 
temperament, in sex, in stage of development, 
in home life, in previous education, in motive, 
etc., should control in all cases. There is, un- 
fortunately, a widespread tendency to set up a 
multitude of little rules, for whose infraction 
the children are punished as impulse prompts. 
A late report shows that probably five times as 
many punishments, great and small, are inflicted 
as a result of a petty whim or for the violation of 
rules of propriety as for violation of the weightier 
laws embraced in the Ten Commandments. Chil- 



STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. 199 

dren are far more reasonable than is generally 
supposed; if this be kept in mind, the problem 
of punishment solves with less difficulty. 

The fatigue point is a profitable subject in child 
study. It has already been incidentally mentioned 
in connection with the eye. If you look for a few 
moments at a small red spot on a light-colored 
object and then look at a white surface, you will 
see a green spot of about the same shape and size 
as the former. This phenomenon is explained by 
the fact that in looking intently at the red spot 
the capacity of the nerve cells for appreciating 
the red color is slightly exhausted, while their 
capacity to appreciate the green, its complemen- 
tary color, is not called into exercise at all. Wlien 
the eye turns to the white surface, the capacity 
to appreciate the green being more acute, it 
promptly brings that color into prominence at the 
expense of the red. The regular ticTc, tick, of the 
clock becomes tick, tack, because of the slight dif- 
ference in the exhaustive effects upon the auditory 
nerve cells. The sense of taste may grow tem- 
porarily obtuse to any substance because its nerve 
cells also become weary from the demands made 
upon them. This law of fatigue governs every 
organ of the body, including the muscles and the 
whole cerebro-spinal system. Eest and sleep are 
as necessary to the child's health and development 
as exercise. It is doubtful whether he can get too 
much sleep in infancy; few take too much in child- 
hood. Both rest and sleep have a higher purpose 
than simply to relieve the child of his sense of 
weariness. Weariness is but a sign by which Na- 



200 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

ture gives notice that strength is disappearing, 
and that tissues must be rebuilt and restored. That 
is a heartless taskmaker indeed, who ignores the 
law of fatigue in the management of children. 

Weariness seems to be chronic with some chil- 
dren. It is often said of a certain child or of a 
certain man, " He was born tired.'' Such people 
are more probably afflicted with laziness which 
may or may not be inherited. Inquiry will show 
you, however, that there are some genuine cases 
of chronic weariness among children, due possibly 
to weak constitutions, to lung trouble, to heart 
affection, to nervous depression, to lack of vital- 
ity, to continued overexertion, to lack of nourish- 
ing food, to lack of exercise, to worry, or to some 
kindred cause. All these cases appeal at once 
for kinder consideration than is usually given, 
but healthy children make the same appeal. It 
is no more important that the former be made 
healthy and vigorous than that the latter be kept 
so. Some children naturally tire more quickly 
than others. It ought not to be expected that all 
children should do an equal amount of work in 
the same time any more than that all should be 
able to lift equal weights. Work done represents 
just so much strength used. If all must do the 
same work, it means that some must be under a 
high tension and that others must be doing less 
than they are able. The child should he required 
to do no more than that which he can do tvithout 
overexertion, and which ivill gradually develop ad- 
ditional power from day to day. Excessive weari- 
ness at any time means that the work has been 



STAGES OP GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. 201 

too heavy for the child or that it has been con- 
tinued too long. Frequent rest periods and vari- 
ety in Avork are demanded by every child. 

It matters little whether the work assigned be 
physical or mental. The brain tires as well as 
any other part of the body. Some kinds of brain 
work are more exhaustive than others. Statistics 
show that school programs which ignore the law 
of fatigue are most wasteful in results. Dr. 
W. 0. Krohn has tested about forty thousand 
children with reference to the period of the day 
when memory is most retentive. He found that 
if the subjects were taken indifferently during the 
first school hour of the day, the average retentive 
power of the pupils was eighty-nine per cent; for 
the last hour of the morning, sixty-three per cent; 
for the first hour of the afternoon, seventy-five 
per cent; for the last hour in the afternoon, sev- 
enty-seven per cent. This shows very conclusively 
that memory is twenty-six per cent more effective 
during the first morning hour than during the 
last. When the order of the subjects was read- 
ing, grammar, arithmetic, geography, and history, 
the average was eighty-nine, fifty-eight, sixty- 
eight, and seventy-six per cent respectively; .when 
the order was arithmetic, elementary science, read- 
ing, drawing, geography, and history, the average 
was eighty-nine, seventy-nine, eighty-two, and 
eighty-six per cent. This last arrangement of 
studies increases the retentive power of the aver- 
age pupil over that of the hit-or-miss program 
sixteen per cent for the third hour, seven per cent 
for the fourth, and nine per cent for the last hour 



202 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

of the day. In other words, a rational arrange- 
ment of the school program increases the memory 
power of the children from ten to twelve -per cent 
for the day as a whole — a saving of one year in ten 
in the school life of the child hy this means alone. 
Accuracy and attention tests by other investigators 
show approximately the same results, though the 
inquiries have been confined within narrow limits. 
In collating data on these questions many errors 
creep in, but the figures are sufficiently definite 
to show how fruitful in results to the home and 
the school further inquiries may prove. Of course, 
the program problem is not to be solved by mem- 
ory tests alone. Some one is yet to do the chil- 
dren a great service in determining specifically the 
most profitable study and recitation hours for the 
different subjects. 

A study of the child which ignores the aesthetic 
instinct would be incomplete. Art realizes itself 
in expression, or, possibly better, art is expression. 
Its finer forms are poetry, music, architecture, 
sculpture, drawing, and painting. In their earlier 
stages they evidently served a utilitarian purpose, 
or at most served to give tangible expression to 
commonplace ideas. The beautiful forms in na- 
ture kindled impulses to imitate them, and aes- 
thetic taste slowly developed, becoming more dis- 
criminating and more refined with each succeed- 
ing generation. In some such way the child 
begins and progresses in drawing and painting. 
The first or the hundredth picture may be very 
crude indeed to us, but it is perfect to him, for it 
expresses an idea. As long as it symbolizes that 



STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. 203 

to him, it has a mission. Eead a story to the chil- 
dren, asking them all to draw pictures of the most 
interesting parts of it. The collection will show 
the points in the story most vividly affecting them, 
and will probably demonstrate the fact that the in- 
tellectual rather than the ajsthetic activities dic- 
tate the kinds of pictures they draw. These draw- 
ings will also help you to discover the indications 
of artistic promise among your pupils. It is prob- 
able, though, that in most of the children the emo- 
tions of the beautiful are aroused through music 
and song long before they are perceptibly respond- 
ing to color and form. 

The harmony of knowledge and experience is 
called truth; the harmony or agreement of truth, 
as ideal, with concrete forms is called beauty; the 
harmony of truth and personal action is called 
right. The intimate relationship of the beautiful 
with the true and the good makes its cultivation 
essential to the highest attainments in the other 
two. In the properly educated child the pleasures 
of the higher senses gradually displace those of 
the lower, and in their turn they become subordi- 
nated to the pleasures of the intellectual life. The 
fine arts, appealing as they do directly to the senses 
of hearing and sight, thus become a powerful fac- 
tor in developing the finer instincts of the child's 
nature. They stimulate the imagination and 
quicken all the higher activities of the self. For 
this reason every child should be surrounded with 
beautiful things of nature and of art. The home, 
however humble, should be architecturall}'' a 
model, inside and out; its furniture, though plain. 



204 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

should be in good taste, both in design and ar- 
rangement; the yard should be beautified by orna- 
mental shrubs and trees, flowering plants contrib- 
uting their wealth of color to the scene. Such a 
home costs no more than the ungainly looking 
boxes which many people set up in barren plots 
and call a house and its educative effect is beyond 
estimate. With books on the shelves and pictures 
on the walls selected with the same taste and judg- 
ment, though they be few, the ideal home environ- 
ment is complete, provided always that a conse- 
crated mother's heart warms every nook and cor- 
ner in it. What is desirable in the home is, in its 
way, also desirable in the schoolhouse. All the 
forces that can be brought to conspire for the cul- 
tivation of the aesthetic sense will contribute also 
to the making of gentler, truer manhood. Super- 
intendent Powell, of Washington, says that since 
manual training, including drawing, clay model- 
ing, and simple designing, have been introduced 
into the city schools, many ill-kept and degraded 
homes have been revolutionized both in appear- 
ance and morals. The children take matters into 
their own hands and become the schoolmasters of 
their parents, transforming repulsive hovels into 
cozy, inviting homes. It is an easy step from 
beauty of form and beauty of language to beauty 
of thought and action, for they are always mutual- 
ly strengthening and refining each other. 

The unconscious or subconscious influences 
that alike affect the child and the man are not less 
powerful in shaping the child's tastes and char- 
acter than those coming consciously into his life. 



STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. 205 

The atmosphere of his environment permeates 
every fiber of his being, giving him tone and tem- 
perament that long years of ett'ort can not entirely 
overcome. Waldstein says that the essentials in 
education are " about the same among all civi- 
lized nations, and that the conscious self is sub- 
stantially the same wherever schools and colleges 
exist." The subconscious self, however, which is 
" built up out of that countless multitude of sub- 
conscious impressions from the surroundings, cus- 
toms, language, national types, physical effects of 
climate, and many other sources is widely differ- 
ent." So effective and yet so subtle are these 
subconscious forces in infancy and childhood in 
organizing tliis fundamental self that doubtless 
much is attributed to heredity which really owes 
its existence to them. Conscious imitation is al- 
ways accounted a great factor in education. In 
these earlier years unconscious imitation is con- 
tinually reacting upon the child and molding him 
after the pattern of those Avith whom he constantly 
associates. After I had reached manhood I trav- 
eled for nearly a month with a friend who lisped 
in speaking certain words. Afterward, to my 
surprise, I found myself lisping a little, and it 
was years before I was entirely free from it. A 
distinguished professor in a Western college 
stammers slightly; so did his father, and so does 
every one of his five children. There seems to 
be no physical reason for it. May it not be due 
wholly to subconscious imitation? One of the 
most popular teachers of English in the West tells 
me that she is constantly fighting the influence of 



20G THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

the incorrect language of her pupils upon her own 
language. To this principle is due the fact that a 
child who reads only books written by masters of 
diction unconsciously perfects himself in literary 
style. For all practical purposes, a few years of 
such reading is worth more than a set course in 
rhetoric. How important, then, that every book 
put into the hand of the child, whether at home or 
in the schoolroom, be the most perfect book on 
the subject that the genius of man has created! 
The relation of these subconscious elements to 
knowledge was discussed in connection with the 
sensation continuum in Chapter VIII, and it is 
hoped that their function in education has been 
sufficiently emphasized in several places to pre- 
vent their being overlooked by any reader of this 
book. 

The function of sympathy in the care and cul- 
ture of children has been recognized ever since 
Eve named her firstborn, but its unselfish exercise 
is not so general as its antiquity would warrant us 
to expect. The social instinct finds its most grate- 
ful satisfaction in sympathy, in the consciousness 
of being the object of disinterested affection and 
interest. The child as naturally responds to sym- 
pathy as does the plant to moisture and sunshine. 
]\Iany even of his physical impulses await the en- 
couragement of sympathy. His intellectual and 
moral impulses still more fully depend upon it. 
Whatever contributes to the child's pleasure at- 
tracts him, and its unconscious influence upon him 
is assured. The greatest direct educative force 
that can be brought to bear upon the child is 



STAGES OF GROWTH, FATIGUE POINT. 207 

sympathy; tliat sympathy which counts no sacri- 
iice too great that may result in good to him; that 
sympathy which prompts an exhaustive study of 
his nature and of the various forces by which he 
may attain to the stature of the highest manhood; 
that sympathy that goes out alike to the rich and 
the poor, to the favored and the ill-favored, to the 
keen-witted and the dullard, to the faithful and 
the faithless; that sympathy which is long-suffer- 
ing and kind, which endureth all things, which 
never faileth. Sympathy is the mother of patience 
and the inventor of devices. Its touch never chills, 
its resources never fail. If the study of the child 
does not quicken affection and interest for it, you 
are not called to its service, either as parent or 
teacher. If you are not moved to give it the best 
of your life, your work must in large measure be 
vain. The great teachers have ever been men and 
women of warm hearts and of unselfish devotion. 



17 



CHAPTER XXllI. 

CONCLUSIONS. 

If this book accomplishes its purpose, you 
are now fairly well prepared to enter upon the 
study of the child, for what has been said is in- 
tended simply to serve as an introduction to child 
nature and child problems. Many subjects dis- 
cussed, as well as others not mentioned at all, are 
treated quite exhaustively in a scientific way by 
expert investigators, and their assistance will be 
found of much value upon any line which may at- 
tract you. (See the brief bibliography on pages 
211 to 215.) 

The following additional topics are among 
those worthy a full chapter in any book on the 
child: The religious ideas of children, the sense of 
humor in children, the indications of genius, the 
tendency to deterioration, curiosity and wonder, 
the different intellectual activities as afEected by 
race, reaction time, the artistic sense, illusions, 
dreams, hypnotic suggestions, the origin of fear, 
the child as the child's teacher, the pubescent peri- 
od, the effect of idleness, mental differences of the 
sexes, prejudices of children, spinal curvature, its 
causes and remedies, children's pranks, children's 
ideas of number, children's drawings, children in 
208 



CONCLUSIONS. 209 

storyland, books for children, the Sunday after- 
noon problem, the poetry and music adapted to 
child life, the function of fairy tales, the true 
office of the home. 

Local clubs for child study are wonderful aids 
to its effectiveness. Each club of teachers will 
find the interest and profit greatly enhanced by 
enlisting the co-operation of specialists within its 
circle. Physicians, dentists, oculists, neurologists, 
nurses, ministers, psychologists, scientists, and au- 
thors are usually pleased to be asked for papers or 
addresses on subjects coming within the range of 
their experience. A few intelligent mothers will 
make invaluable members. The program at such 
club meetings should include reports on per- 
sonal observations and investigations. It should 
bear a logical sequence to its predecessor, and the 
discussions should not drift ofi: into aimless and 
profitless generalities. A review of many subjects 
as outlined in this book will make a good year's 
work for a club. The tendency common in some 
clubs to spend most of the time in research con- 
cerning abnormal children is unwise. It is impera- 
tive that the normal child be made the center of 
the study and that he be the model to which all 
the others shall be conforming in their develop- 
ment. It is equally unwise for experiments and 
tests to be conducted in such a way as to destroy 
the naturalness of the child or to excite self-con- 
sciousness imduly, or to mention little peculiarities 
tliat by the attention thus given them become less 
easy for the children to outgrow. Follow the 
methods of the wise physician in it all. 



210 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Mothers' clubs, composed exclusively of moth- 
ers, are forming in some localities. The zest with 
which they enter upon the study of these problems 
shows that the homes of our lands as well as the 
schoolrooms are soon to receive the direct bene- 
tits of this great movement. The ideal condition 
in education is to be realized when intelligent 
teachers and intelligent mothers are cordially co- 
operating in the training of the children. With 
such clubs multiplying everywhere the dreams 
of the fathers will not be long in becoming 
realities. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 



A COMPLETE list of books and of articles on the 
child and directly related subjects would itself 
make a small volume. The following named will 
be found of great value to the general as well as to 
the special student: 

Apperception. Karl Lange. D. C. Heath 
& Co. 

Body and Mind. Henry Maudsley. D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 

The Growth of the Brain. H. D. Donaldson. 
Charles Scribners Sons. 

Boyhood of Great Men. J. G. Edgar. Harper 
Brothers. 

Brain Work and Overwork. H. C. Wood, Jr. 
P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 

Children's Ways. James Sully. D. Appleton 
&Co. 

The Child and Childhood in Folk Thought. 
Alexander P. Chamberlain. Macmillan & Co. 

Children of the Poor. Jacob A. Riis. Charles 
Scribner's Sons. 

Studies of Childhood. James Sully. D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 

211 



212 THE STUDY OP THE CHILD. 

The Child, its Spiritual Nature. Henry K. 
Lewis. Macmillan & Co. 

Children's Eights. Kate D. Wiggin. Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. 

Child Study Monthly. W. D. Krohn and Al- 
fred Bayliss, editors, Chicago. 

First Three Years of Childhood. Bernard 
Perez. E. L. Kellogg & Co. 

The Study of Children. Francis Warner. Mac- 
millan & Co. 

Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes. 
Charles E. Henderson. D. C. Heath & Co. 

The Education of the Central Nervous System. 
Eeuben P. Halleck. Macmillan & Co. 

The Eyesight and How to Care for it. Charles 
H. Burnett. P. Blaldston, Son & Co. 

The Family, an Historical and Social Study. 
Charles F. Thwing. Lee & Shepard. 

Habit and Instinct. Lloyd Morgan. Edwin 
Arnold, London. 

Hearing and How to Keep it Charles H. 
Burnett. P. Blakiston, Son & Co. 

Heredity. Th. Eibot. D. Appleton & Co. 

Hereditary Genius. Francis Galton. D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 

The Hygiene of the Eye in School. Hermann 
Cohn. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., London. 

The Intellectual and Moral Development of 
the Child. G. Compayre. D. Appleton & Co. 

The Jukes. E. L. Dugdale. G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. 

Juvenile Offenders. W. D. Morrison. D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 213 

Mental Affections in Childhood and Youth. 
Langdon Down. J. A. Churchill, London. 

Mentcally Deficient Children. G. E. Shuttle- 
worth. H. K. Lewis, London. 

Mentally Feeble-minded Children. Fletcher 
Beach. J. A. Churchill, London. 

Mental Development of the Child. W. Preyer. 
D. Appleton & Co. 

The Moral Instruction of Children. Felix 
Adler. D. Appleton & Co. 

Methods of Mind Training. Catharine Aiken. 
Harper Brothers. 

The Northwestern Journal of Education. J. 
H. Miller, editor. J. H. Miller, Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The Pedagogical Seminary, vols, i, ii, and iii. 
Valuable articles on nearly every phase of the 
subject. G. Stanley Hall, editor. J. H. Orpha, 
Worcester, Massachusetts. 

The Physiology of the Senses. John G. Mc- 
Kendrick and William Snodgrass. Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons. 

Practical Lessons in Psychology. W. 0. Krohn. 
The Werner Company. 

Proceedings of National Educational Associa- 
tion. Papers in child study and other departments 
in volumes for 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897. 

Psychology and Psychic Culture. Reuben P. 
Halleck. American Book Company, 

Psychology. John Dewey. Harper Brothers. 

Responsibility in Mental Disease. Henry 
Maudsley. D. Appleton & Co. 

The Subconscious Self. Louis Waldstein. 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



214 THE STUDY OF THE CHILD. 

Symbolic Education. Susan E. Blow. D. Ap- 
pleton & Co. 

The Mind of the Child, vol. i. The Senses 
and the Will, vol. ii. Development of the Intel- 
lect. W. Preyer. B. Appleton & Co. 

Studies in Education. Earl Barnes. Leland 
Stanford Junior University. 

Studies in Home and Child Life. Mrs. S. M. 
I. Henry. Fleming H. Kevell Company. 

Transactions of the Illinois Society for Child 
Study. The Werner Company. 

Valuable articles on the subject of child study 
have been published recently in nearly all the 
great educational periodicals. The following 
papers by Oscar Chrisman, Ph. D., of the State 
Normal School of Kansas, will repay perusal: Se- 
cret Language of Children, Science, vol. xxii, p. 
303, and vol. xxiii, p. 18; The Hearing of Chil- 
dren, Pedagogical Seminary, vol. ii, p. 397; Child 
Study, a New Department of Education, Forum, 
vol. xvi, p. 728; One Year with a Little Girl, 
Educational Eeview, vol. ix, p. 52; Children's Se- 
cret Language, Child Study Monthly, vol. ii, p. 
202; How a Story affected a Child, Child Study 
Monthly, vol. ii, p. 650; The Hearing of School 
Children, Northwestern Monthly, vol. viii, p. 31; 
Motor Control: its Nature and Place in the Phys- 
ical and Psychical Life of the Child, State Normal 
Monthly, vol. x, p. 3; The Secret Language of 
Children, Northwestern Monthly, vol. viii, pp. 
187, 375, 550; Exceptionals, State Normal Month- 
ly, vol. X, p. 51; The Eeligious Ideas of a Child, 
Child Study Monthly, vol iii, p. 516; Paidology, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 215 

the Science of the Child, Educational Eeview, vol. 
XV, p. 269; The Kesiilts of Child Study, Educa- 
tion, vol. xviii, p. 323; The Secret Language of 
Children, Century Magazine, vol. Ivi, p. 54; lie- 
ligious Periods in Child Growth, Educational lle- 
Eeview, vol. xvi, p. 39. 



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